
Oks Id .* f r O 

Book__ 

GopyrightW 



CGEMRIGHT DEPOSIT. 



GUN FODDER 




Major A. Hamilton Gibbs, R. A. 



GUN FODDER 

THE DIARY OF 
FOUR YEARS OF WAR 



BY 



A. HAMILTON GIBBS 

MAJOR, R.A. 



WITH INTRODUCTION BY PHILIP GIBBS 



N ON- REFER ? 




cQlAIVAD • Q3S 



BOSTON 

LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY 

1919 



HMD 



Copyright, 1919, 
By A. Hamilton Gibbs. 



All rights reserved 
Published, October, 1919 



Ml 23 1919 



Set up and electrotyped by J. S. Cushing Co., Norwood, Mass., U.S.A. 



©CI.A536 2P7 



INTRODUCTION 

There seems no reason to me why I should write 
a preface to my brother's book except that I have 
been, as it were, a herald of war proclaiming the 
achievements of Knights and men-at-arns in this 
great conflict that has passed, and so may take up 
my scroll again on his behalf, because here is a good 
soldier who has told, in a good book, his story of 

"most disastrous chances of moving accidents 
by flood and field ; of hair-breadth 'scapes i ' 
the imminent-deadly breach." 
That he was a good soldier I can say not because 
my judgment is swayed by brotherly partiality, but 
because I saw him at his job, and heard the opinions 
of his fellow officers, which were immensely in his 
favor. "Your brother is a born soldier," said my 
own Chief who was himself a gallant officer and 
had a quick eye for character. I think that was 
true. The boy whom once I wheeled in a go-cart 
when he was a shock-headed Peter and I the elder 
brother with a sense of responsibility towards him, 
had grown up before the war into a strong man 
whose physical prowess as an amateur pugilist, 
golfer, archer (in any old sport) was quite outside 
my sphere of activities, which were restricted to 
watching the world spin round and recording its 



vi INTRODUCTION 

movements by quick penmanship. Then the war 
came and like all the elder brothers of England I 
had a quick kind of heart-beat when I knew that 
the kid brother had joined up and in due time would 
have to face the music being played by the great 
orchestra of death across the fields of life. 

I saw the war before he did, knew the worst before 
he guessed at the lesser evils of it, heard the crash of 
shell fire, went into burning and bombarded towns, 
helped to carry dead and wounded, while he was 
training in England under foul-mouthed sergeants 
— training to learn how to fight, and, if need be, 
how to die, like a little gentleman. But I from the 
first was only the onlooker, the recorder, and he 
was to be, very quickly, one of the actors in the 
drama, up to his neck in the "real thing." His 
point of view was to be quite different from mine. 
I saw the war in the mass, in its broad aspects and 
movements from the front line trenches to the Base, 
from one end of the front to the other. I went into 
dirty places, but did not stay there. I went from 
one little corner of hell to another, but did not 
dwell in its narrow boundaries long enough to get its 
intimate details of hellishness burnt into my body 
and soul. He did. He had not the same broad 
vision of the business of war — appalling in its vast- 
ness of sacrifice and suffering, wonderful in its mass- 
heroism — but was one little ant in a particular 
muck-heap for a long period of time, until the stench 
of it, the filth of it, the boredom of it, the futility of 
it, entered into his very being, and was part of him 
as he was part of it. His was the greater knowledge. 



INTRODUCTION vii 

He was the sufferer, the victim. Our ways lay 
apart for a long time. He became a ghost to me, 
during his long spell in Salonica, and I thought of 
him only as a ghost figure belonging to that other 
life of mine which I had known "before the war", 
that far-off period of peace which seemed to have 
gone forever. Then one day I came across him 
again out in Flanders in a field near Armentieres, 
and saw how he had hardened and grown, not only 
in years but in thoughtfulness and knowledge. He 
was a commander of men, with the power of life 
and death over them. He was a commander of 
guns with the power of death over human creatures 
lurking in holes in the earth, invisible creatures be- 
yond a hedge of barbed wire and a line of trench. 
But he also was under the discipline of other powers 
with higher command than his — who called to 
him on the telephone and told him to do things he 
hated to do, but had to do, things which he thought 
were wrong to do, but had to do ; and among those 
other powers, disciplining his body and soul was 
German gun-power from that other side of the 
barbed-wire hedge, always a menace to him, always 
teasing him with the chance of death, — a yard this 
way, a yard that, as I could see by the shell-holes 
round about his gun-pits, following the track of his 
field-path, clustering in groups outside the little 
white house in which he had his mess. I studied 
this brother of mine curiously. How did he face all 
the nerve-strain under which I had seen many men 
break? He was merry and bright (except for 
sudden silences and a dark look in his eyes at times) . 



viii INTRODUCTION 

He had his old banjo with him and tinkled out a 
tune on it. How did he handle his men and junior 
officers? They seemed to like him "this side 
idolatry ", yet he had a grip on them, and demanded 
obedience, which they gave with respect. Queer! 
My kid-brother had learned the trick of command. 
He had an iron hand under a velvet glove. The 
line of his jaw, his straight nose (made straighter by 
that boxing in his old Oxford days) were cut out for 
a job like this. He looked the part. He was born 
to it. All his training had led up to this soldier's 
job in the field, though I had not guessed so when I 
wheeled him in that old go-cart. 

For me he had a slight contempt, which he will 
deny when he reads this preface. Though a writer 
of books before the war, he had now the soldier's 
scorn of the chronicler. It hurt him to see my green 
arm-bands, my badge of shame. That I had a motor- 
car seemed to him, in his stationary exile, the sign of 
a soft job — as, compared with his it was — dis- 
graceful in its luxury. From time to time I saw him, 
and, in spite of many narrow escapes under heavy 
shelling, he did not change, but was splendidly 
cheerful. Even on the eve of the great German 
offensive in March of 1918, when he took me to see 
the graves dug in under the embankment south of 
St. Quentin, he did not seem apprehensive of the 
awful ordeal ahead of him. I knew more than he 
did about that. I knew the time and place of its 
coming, and I knew that he was in a very perilous 
position. We said "so long" to each other at 
parting, with a grip of hands, and I thought it 



INTRODUCTION ix 

might be the last time I should see him. It was I 
think ten days later when I saw him, and in that 
time much had happened, and all that time I gave 
him up as lost. Under the overwhelming weight of 
numbers — 114 Divisions to 48 — the British line 
had broken, and, fighting desperately, day by day, 
our men fell back mile after mile with the enemy out- 
flanking them, cutting off broken battalions, threat- 
ening to cut off vast bodies of men. Every day I 
was in the swirl of that Retreat, pushing up to its 
rearguards, seeing with increasing dismay the fearful 
wreckage of our organization and machine of war 
which became for a little while like the broken 
springs of a watch, with Army, Corps, and Divisional 
staffs entirely out of tune with the fighting units 
owing to the break-down of all lines of communi- 
cation. In that tide of traffic, of men, and guns, 
and transport, I made a few enquiries about that 
brother of mine. Nobody had seen, or heard of his 
battery. I must have been close to him at times in 
Noyon, and Guiscard and Ham, but one individual 
was like a needle in a bunch of hay, and the enemy 
had rolled over in a tide, and there did not seem to 
me a chance of his escape. Then, one morning, in a 
village near Poix, when I asked a gunner-officer 
whether he had seen my brother's battery, he said, 
"Yes — two villages up that road." "Do you 
happen to know Major Gibbs?" "Yes ... I 
saw him walking along there a few minutes ago." 

It was like hearing that the dead had risen from 
the grave. 

Half an hour later we came face to face. 



x INTRODUCTION 

He said : 

"Hulloa,oldman!" 

And I said : 

"Hulloa, young fellow!" 

Then we shook hands on it, and he told me some 
of his adventures, and I marvelled at him, because 
after a wash and shave he looked as though he had 
just come from a holiday at Brighton instead of 
from the Valley of Death. He was as bright as 
ever, and I honestly believe even now that in spite 
of all his danger and suffering, he had enjoyed the 
horrible thrills of his adventures. It was only later 
when his guns were in action near Albert that I saw 
a change in him. The constant shelling, and the 
death of some of his officers and men, had begun to 
tell on him at last. I saw that his nerve was on the 
edge of snapping, as other men's nerves had snapped 
after less than his experiences, and I decided to 
rescue him by any means I could. ... I had the 
luck to get him out of that hole in the earth just be- 
fore the ending of the war. 

Now I have read his book. It is a real book. 
Here truthfully, nakedly, vividly, is the experience 
not only of one soldier in the British Army, but of 
thousands, and hundreds of thousands. All our men 
went through the training he describes, were shaped 
by its hardness and its roughness, were trampled into 
obedience of soul and body by its heavy discipline. 
Here is the boredom of war, as well as its thrill of 
horror, that devastating long-drawn Boredom which 
is the characteristic of war and the cause of much of 
its suffering. Here is the sense of futility which 



INTRODUCTION xi 

sinks into the soldier's mind, tends to sap his mental 
strength and embitters him, so that the edge is 
taken off his enthusiasm, and he abandons the 
fervor of the ideal with which he volunteered. 

There is a tragic bitterness in the book, and that 
is not peculiar to the temperament of the author, 
but a general feeling to be found among masses of 
demobilized officers and men, not only of the British 
Armies, but of the French, and I fancy, also, of the 
American forces. What is the cause of that ? Why 
this spirit of revolt on the part of men who fought 
with invincible courage and long patience? It will 
seem strange to people who have only seen war from 
afar that an officer like this, decorated for valour, 
early in the field, one of the old stock and tradition 
of English loyalty, should utter such fierce words 
about the leaders of the war, such ironical words 
about the purpose and sacrifice of the world conflict. 
He seems to accuse other enemies than the Germans, 
to turn round upon Allied statesmen, philosophers, 
preachers, mobs and say, "You too were guilty of 
this fearful thing. Your hands are red also with 
the blood of youth. And you forget already those 
who saved you by their sacrifice." 

That is what he says, clearly, in many passionate 
paragraphs; and I can bear witness that his point 
of view is shared by many other soldiers who fought 
in France. These men were thinking hard when day 
by day they were close to death. In their dug-outs 
and ditches they asked of their own souls enormous 
questions. They asked whether the war was being 
fought really for Liberty, really to crush Militarism, 



xii INTRODUCTION 

really on behalf of Democracy, or whether to bolster 
up the same system on our side of the lines which 
had produced the evils of the German menace. Was 
it not a conflict between rival Powers imbued with 
exactly the same philosophy of Imperialism and 
Force? Was it not the product of commercial 
greed, diplomatic fears and treacheries and intrigues 
(conducted secretly over the heads of the peoples) 
and had not the German people been led on to their 
villainy by the same spell- words and "dope" which 
had been put over our peoples, so that the watch- 
words of "patriotism", "defensive warfare" and 
"Justice" had been used to justify this massacre in 
the fields of Europe by the Old Men of all nations, 
who used the Boys as pawns in their Devil's game? 
The whole structure of Europe had been wrong. The 
ministers of the Christian churches had failed Christ 
by supporting the philosophy of Force, and diplo- 
matic wickedness and old traditions of hatred. All 
nations were involved in this hark-back to the jungle- 
world, and Germany was only most guilty because 
first to throw off the mask, most efficient in the 
mechanism of Brute-government, most logical in 
the damnable laws of that philosophy which poisoned 
the spirit of the modern world. 

That was the conclusion to which, rightly or 
wrongly — I think rightly — many men arrived in 
their secret conferences with their own souls when 
death stood near the door of their dug-outs. 

That sense of having fought for ideals which were 
not real in the purpose of the war embittered them ; 
and they were most bitter on their home coming, 



INTRODUCTION xiii 

after Armistice, or after Peace, when in England 
they found that the victory they had won was being 
used not to inaugurate a new era of liberty, but to 
strengthen the old laws of "Might and Right", the 
old tyrannies of government without the consent of 
peoples, the old Fetish worship of hatred masking 
under the divine name of Patriotism. Disillusion- 
ment, despair, a tragic rage, filled the hearts of 
fighting men who after all their sacrifices found 
themselves unrewarded, unemployed, and unsatisfied 
in their souls. Out of this psychological distress 
have come civil strife and much of the unrest which 
is now at work. 

My brother's book reveals something of this at 
work in his own mind, and, as such, is a revelation of 
all his comrades. I do not think he has yet found 
the key to the New Philosophy which will arise out 
of all that experience, emotion, and thought ; just as 
the mass of fighting men are vague about the future 
which must replace the bad old past. They are per- 
plexed, illogical, passionate without a clear purpose. 
But undoubtedly out of their perplexities and passion 
the New Era will be born. 

So I salute my "kid-brother" as one of the makers 
of History greater than that which crushed German 
militarism and punished German crimes (which were 
great), and I wish him luck with this book, which is 
honest, vital, and revealing. 

Philip Gibbs. 



CONTENTS 



PAGE 



Introduction by Philip Gibbs v 

PART I 
The Ranks 1 

PART II 
Ubique 83 

PART III 

The Western Front 139 

PART IV 

The Armistice 303 



PART I 
THE RANKS 



GUN FODDER 



I. THE RANKS 
1. 

In June, 1914, I came out of a hospital in Phila- 
delphia after an operation, faced with two facts. 
One was that I needed a holiday at home in England, 
the second that after all hospital expenses were paid 
I had five dollars in the world. But there was a 
half-finished novel in my trunk and the last weeks 
of the theatrical tour which had brought me to 
Philadelphia would tide me over. A month later 
the novel was bought by a magazine and the boat 
that took me to England seemed to me to be the 
tangible result of concentrated will power. "Man 
proposes. . . ." My own proposal was to return 
to America in a month or six weeks to resume the 
task of carving myself a niche in the fiction market. 

The parting advice of the surgeon had been that I 
was not to play ball or ride a horse for at least six 
months. The green sweeping uplands of Bucking- 
hamshire greeted me with all their fragrance and a 
trig golf course gave me back strength while I thought 
over ideas for a new novel. 

Then like a thunderbolt the word "War" crashed 
out. Its full significance did not break through the 



4 GUN FODDER 

ego of one who so shortly would be leaving Europe 
far behind and to whom a personal career seemed of 
vital importance. England was at war. The Army 
would be buckling on its sword, running out its 
guns ; the Navy clearing decks for action. It was 
their job, not mine. The Boer War had only touched 
upon my childish consciousness as a shouting in the 
streets, cheering multitudes and brass bands. War, 
as such, was something which I had never considered 
as having any personal meaning for me. Politics 
and war were the business of politicians and soldiers. 
My business was writing and I went up to London 
to arrange accommodations on the boat to New 
York. 

London was different in those hot August days. 
Long queues waited all day, — not outside theatres, 
but outside recruiting offices, — city men, tramps, 
bricklayers, men of all types and ages with a look 
in their eyes that puzzled me. Every taxi hoot drew 
one's attention to the flaring poster on each car 
"Young Men of England, Your King and Country 
need you !" 

How many millions of young men there were who 
would be glad to answer that call to adventure, - — 
an adventure which surely could not last more than 
six months ? It did not call me. My adventure lay 
in that wonderland of sprouting towers that glistened 
behind the Statue of Liberty. 

But day by day the grey wave swept on, tearing 
down all veils from before the altar of reality. 
Belgian women were not merely bayoneted. 

"Why don't we stop this? What is the Army 



THE RANKS 5 

doing?" How easy to cry that out from the leafy 
lanes of Buckinghamshire. A woman friend of mine 
travelled up in the train with me one morning, a 
friend whose philosophy and way of life had seemed 
to me more near the ideal than I had dreamed of being 
able to reach. She spoke of war, impersonally and 
without recruiting propaganda. All unconsciously 
she opened my eyes to the unpleasant fact that it 
was my war too. Suppose I had returned to New 
York and the Germans had jumped the tiny Channel 
and "bayoneted" her and her children? Could I 
ever call myself a man again ? 

I took a taxi and went round London. Every 
recruiting office looked like a four-hour wait. I was 
in a hurry. So I went by train to Bedford and found 
it crowded with Highlanders. When I asked the 
way to the recruiting office they looked at me oddly. 
Their speech was beyond my London ear but a 
pointing series of arms showed it to me. 

By a miracle the place was empty except for the 
doctor and an assistant in khaki. 

"I want to join the Cavalry," said I. 

"Very good, sir. Will you please take off your 
clothes." 

It was the last time a sergeant called me sir for 
many a long day. 

I stripped, was thumped and listened to and gave 
description of tattoo marks which interested that 
doctor greatly. The appendix scar didn't seem to 
strike him. " What is it ? " said he, looking at it 
curiously, and when I told him merely grunted. 
Shades of Shaw ! I thought with a jump of that 



6 GUN FODDER 

Philadelphia surgeon. "Don't ride a horse for six 
months." Only three had elapsed. 

I was passed fit. I assured them that I was 
English on both sides, unmarried, not a spy, and 
was finally given a bundle of papers and told to 
take them along to the barracks. 

The barracks were full of roughnecks and it oc- 
curred to me for the first time, as I listened to them 
being sworn in, that these were my future brother 
soldiers. What price Mulvaney, Learoyd and 
Ortheris? thought I. 

I repeated the oath after an hour's waiting and 
swore to obey orders and respect superior officers 
and in short do my damnedest to kill the King's 
enemies. I've done the last but when I think of the 
first two that oath makes me smile. 

However, I swore, received two shillings and three- 
pence for my first two days' pay and was ordered 
to report at the Cavalry Depot, Woolwich, the fol- 
lowing day, September 3, 1914. 

The whole business had been done in a rush of 
exaltation that didn't allow me to think. But when 
I stepped out into the crowded streets with that 
two shillings rattling in my pocket I felt a very sober 
man. I knew nothing whatever of soldiering. I 
hardly even knew a corporal from a private or 
a rifle from a ramrod, and here I was Trooper A. 
H. Gibbs, 9th Lancers, with the sullen rumble of 
heavy guns just across the Channel — growing 
louder. 



THE RANKS 7 

2. 

Woolwich ! 

Bad smells, bad beer, bad women, bad language ! — - 
Those early days ! None of us who went through 
the ranks will ever forget the tragedy, the humour, 
the real democracy of that period. The hand of 
time has already coloured it with the glow of ro- 
mance, but in the living it was crude and raw, like 
waking up to find your nightmare real. 

Oxford University doesn't give one much of an 
idea of how to cope with the class of humanity at 
that Depot in spite of Ruskin Hall, the working- 
man's college, of which my knowledge consisted only 
of climbing over their wall and endeavoring to break 
up their happy home. But the Ruskin Hall man 
was a prince by the side of those recruits. They 
came with their shirts sticking out of trousers seats, 
naked toes showing out of gaping boots, and their 
smell — We lay at night side by side on adjoining 
bunks, fifty of us in a room. They had spent their 
two days' pay on beer, bad beer. The weather was 
hot. Most of them were stark naked. I'd had a 
bath that morning. They hadn't. 

The room was enormous. The windows had no 
blinds. The moon streamed in on their distorted 
bodies in all the twistings of uneasy sleep. Some 
of them smoked cigarettes and talked. Others 
blasphemed them for talking but the bulk snored 
and ground their teeth in their sleep. 

A bugle rang out. 

Aching in every limb from the unaccustomed 
hardness of the iron bed it was no hardship to answer 



8 GUN FODDER 

the call. There were lavatories outside each room 
and amid much sleepy blasphemy we shaved, those 
of us who had razors, and washed, and in the chill 
of dawn went down to a misty common. It was 
too early for discipline. There weren't enough 
N.C.O.'s, so for the first few days we hung about 
waiting for breakfast instead of doing physical jerks. 

Breakfast ! One thinks of a warm room with 
cereals and coffee and eggs and bacon with a morn- 
ing paper and, if there's a soot in our cup, a sar- 
castic reference as to cleanliness. That was be- 
fore the war. 

We lined up before the door of a gun shed, hun- 
dreds of us, shivering, filing slowly in one by one 
and having a chunk of bread, a mug of tea and a tin 
of sardines slammed into our hands, the sardines 
having to be divided among four. 

The only man in my four who possessed a jack- 
knife to open the tin had cleaned his pipe with it, 
scraped the mud off his boots, cleaned out his nails 
and cut up plug tobacco. Handy things, jack- 
knives. He proceeded to hack open the tin and 
scoop out sardines. It was only my first morning 
and my stomach wasn't strong in those days. I 
disappeared into the mist, alone with my dry 
bread and tea. Hunger has taught me much since 
then. 

The mist rolled up later and daylight showed us 
to be a pretty tough crowd. We were presently 
taken in hand by a lot of sergeants who divided us 
into groups, made lists of names and began to 
teach us how to march in files, and in sections, — 



I 

THE RANKS 9 

the elements of soldiering. Some of them didn't 
seem to know their left foot from their right but the 
patience of those sergeants was only equalled by the 
cunning of their blasphemy and the stolidity of their 
victims. 

After an hour of it we were given a rest for fifteen 
minutes, this time to get a handful of tobacco. Then 
it went on again and again, — and yet again. 

The whole of that first period of seven days was 
a long jumble of appalling happenings ; meals served 
by scrofulitic hands on plates from which five other 
men's leavings and grease had to be removed; 
bread cut in quarter loaves ; meat fat, greasy, and 
stewed — always stewed, tea, stewed also, without 
appreciable milk, so strong that a spoon stood up in 
it unaided ; sleeping in one's clothes and inadequate 
washing in that atmosphere of filth indescribable; 
of parades to me childish in their elementariness ; 
of long hours in the evening with nothing to do, no 
place to go, no man to talk to, — a period of ab- 
solute isolation in the middle of those thousands 
broken only by letters which assumed a paramount 
importance, constituting as they did one's only link 
with all that one had left behind, that other life 
which now seemed like a mirage. 

Not that one regretted the step. It was a first- 
hand experience of life that only Jack London or 
Masefield could have depicted. It was too the 
means of getting out to fight the Boche. A monot- 
onous means, yes, but every day one learnt some 
new drill and every day one was thrilled with the 
absolute cold-blooded reality of it all. It was good 



10 GUN FODDER 

to be alive, to be a man, to get one's teeth right into 
things. It was a bigger part to play than that of 
the boy in "The Blindness of Virtue." 

3. 

Two incidents stand out in that chrysalis stage 
of becoming soldiers. 

One was a sing-song, spontaneously started among 
the gun sheds in the middle of the white moonlight. 
One of the recruits was a man who had earned his 
living — hideously sarcastic phrase ! — by playing a 
banjo and singing outside public houses. He 
brought his banjo into the army with him. I hope 
he's playing still ! 

He stuck his inverted hat on the ground, lit a 
candle beside it in the middle of the huge square, 
smacked his dry lips and drew the banjo out of its 
baize cover. 

"Perishin' thirsty weather, Bill." 

He volunteered the remark to me as to a brother. 

"Going to play for a drink?" I asked. 

He was already tuning. He then sat down on a 
large stone and began to sing. His accompaniment 
was generous and loud and perhaps once he had a 
voice. It came now with but an echo of its probable 
charm, through a coating of beer and tobacco and 
years of rough living. 

It was extraordinary. Just he sitting on the stone, 
and I standing smoking by his side, and the candle 
flickering in the breeze, and round us the hard black 
and white buildings and the indefinable rumble of a 
great life going on somewhere in the distance. 



THE RANKS 11 

Presently, as though he were the Pied Piper, men 
came in twos and threes and stood round us, forming 
a circle. 

"Give us the 'Little Grey 'Ome in the West', 
George !" 

And " George ", spitting after the prolonged senti- 
ment of Thora, struck up the required song. At 
the end of half an hour there were several hundred 
men gathered round joining in the choruses, volun- 
teering solos, applauding each item generously. 
The musician had five bottles of beer round his in- 
verted hat and perhaps three inside him, and a collec- 
tion of coppers was taken up from time to time. 

They chose love ballads of an ultra-sentimental 
nature with the soft pedal on the sad parts, — these 
men who to-morrow would face certain death. How 
little did that thought come to them then. But 
I looked round at their faces, blandly happy, dirty 
faces, transformed by the moon and by their oath 
of service into the faces of crusaders. 

How many of them are alive to-day, how many 
buried in nameless mounds somewhere in that silent 
desolation? How many of them have suffered 
mutilation? How many of them have come out of 
it untouched, to the waiting arms of their women? 
Brothers, I salute you. 

The other incident was the finding of a friend, a 
kindred spirit in those thousands which accentuated 
one's solitude. 

We had been standing in a long queue outside the 
Quartermaster's store, being issued with khaki one 



12 GUN FODDER 

by one. I was within a hundred yards of getting 
outfitted when the Q.M. came to the door in person 
and yelled that the supply had run out. I think 
we all swore. The getting of khaki meant a vital 
step nearer to the Great Day when we should cross 
the Channel. As the crowd broke away in disorder, 
I heard a voice with an 'h' say "How perfectly 
ruddy!" I could have fallen on the man's neck 
with joy. The owner of it was a comic sight. A 
very battered straw hat, a dirty handkerchief doing 
the duty of collar, a pair of grey flannel trousers 
that had been slept in these many nights. But the 
face was clear and there was a twinkle of humorous 
appreciation in the blue eye. I made a bee-line for 
that man. I don't remember what I said, but in a 
few minutes we were swapping names, and where we 
lived and what we thought of it, and laughing at 
our mutually draggled garments. 

We both threw reserve to the wind and were most 
un-English, except perhaps that we may have looked 
upon each other as the only two white men in a 
tribe of savages. In a sense we were. But it was 
like finding a brother and made all that difference 
to our immediate lives. There was so much pent- 
up feeling in both of us that we hadn't been able 
to put into words. Never have I realized the value 
and comfort of speech so much, or the bond estab- 
lished by sharing experiences and emotions. 

4. 

My new-found "brother's" name was Bucks. 
After a few more days of drilling and marching and 



THE RANKS 13 

sergeant grilling, we both got khaki and spurs and 
cap badges and bandoliers, and we both bought 
white lanyards and cleaning appliances. Smart? 
We made a point of being the smartest recruits of 
the whole bunch. We felt we were the complete 
soldier at last and although there wasn't a horse in 
Woolwich we clattered about in spurs that we 
burnished to the glint of silver. 

And then began the second chapter of our military 
career. We all paraded one morning and were told 
off to go to Tidworth or the Curragh. 

Bucks and I were for Tidworth and marched side 
by side in the great squad of us who tramped in 
step, singing "Tipperary" at the top of our lungs, 
down to the railway station. 

That was the first day I saw an officer, two officers 
as a matter of fact, subalterns of our own regiment. 
It gave one for the first time the feeling of belonging 
to a regiment. In the depot at Woolwich were 9th 
Lancers, 5th Dragoon Guards, and 16th Lancers. 
Now we were going to the 9th Lancer barracks and 
those two subalterns typified the regiment to Bucks 
and me. How we eyed them, those two youngsters, 
and were rather proud of the aloof way in which 
they carried themselves. They were specialists. 
We were novices beginning at the bottom of the 
ladder and I wouldn't have changed places with them 
at that moment had it been possible. As an officer 
I shouldn't have known what to do with the mob 
of which I was one. I should have been awkward, 
embarrassed. 

It didn't occur to me then that there were hundreds, 



14 GUN FODDER 

thousands, who knew as little as we did about the 
Army, who were learning to be second lieutenants as 
we were learning to be troopers. 

We stayed all day in that train, feeding on cheese 
and bread which had been given out wrapped in 
newspapers, and buns and biscuits bought in a rush 
at railway junctions at which we stopped from time 
to time. It was dark when we got to Tidworth, 
that end-of-the-world siding, and were paraded on 
the platform and marched into barracks whose 
thousand windows winked cheerily at us as we 
halted outside the guardroom. 

There were many important people like sergeant 
majors waiting for us, and sergeants who called 
them "sir" and doubled to carry out their orders. 
These latter fell upon us and in a very short time 
we were divided into small groups and marched 
away to barrack rooms for the night. There was 
smartness here, discipline. The chaos of Woolwich 
was a thing of the past. 

Already I pictured myself being promoted to 
lance corporal, the proud bearer of one stripe, pick- 
ing Boches on my lance like a row of pigs, — and I 
hadn't even handled a real lance as yet ! 

5. 

Tidworth, that little cluster of barrack buildings 
on the edge of the sweeping downs, golden in the 
early autumn, full of a lonely beauty like a green 
Sahara with springs and woods, but never a house 
for miles, and no sound but the sighing of the wind 
and the mew of the peewit ! Thus I came to know 



THE RANKS 15 

it first. Later the rain turned it into a sodden stretch 
of mud, blurred and terrible, like a drunken street- 
woman blown by the wind, filling the soul with 
shudders and despair. — The barrack buildings 
covered perhaps a square mile of ground, ranged 
orderly in series, officers' quarters — as far removed 
from Bucks and me as the Carlton Hotel — married 
quarters, sergeants' mess, stables, canteen, riding 
school, barrack rooms, hospital; like a small city, 
thriving and busy, dropped from the blue upon that 
patch of country. 

The N.C.O.'s at Tid worth were regulars, time- 
serving men who had learnt their job in India and 
who looked upon us as a lot of "perishin' amatoors." 
It was a very natural point of view. We presented 
an ungodly sight, a few of us in khaki, some in 
"blues", those terrible garments that make their 
wearers look like an orphans' home, but most in 
civilian garments of the most tattered description. 
Khaki gave one standing, self-respect, cleanliness, 
enabled one to face an officer feeling that one was 
trying at least to be a soldier. 

The barrack rooms were long and whitewashed, 
a stove in the middle, rows of iron beds down either 
side to take twenty men in peace times. As it was 
we late comers slept on "biscuits", square hard 
mattresses, laid down between the iron bunks, and 
mustered nearly forty in a room. In charge of each 
room was a lance corporal or corporal whose job 
it was to detail a room orderly and to see further- 
more that he did his job, i.e., keep the room swept 
and garnished, the lavatory basins washed, the 



16 GUN FODDER 

fireplace blackleaded, the windows cleaned, the step 
swept and whitewashed. 

Over each bed was a locker (without a lock, of 
course) where each man kept his small kit, — razor, 
towel, toothbrush, blacking and his personal treas- 
ures. Those who had no bed had no locker and left 
things beneath the folded blankets of the beds. 

How one missed one's household goods ! One 
learnt to live like a snail, with everything in the 
world upon one's person, — everything in the world 
cut down to the barest necessities, pipe and baccy, 
letters, a photograph, knife, fork and spoon, tooth- 
brush, bit of soap, tooth paste, one towel, one extra 
pair of socks. Have you ever tried it for six months 
— a year ? Then don't. You miss your books 
and pictures, the bowl of flowers on the table, the 
table-cloth. All the things of everyday life that are 
taken for granted become a matter of poignant loss 
when you've got to do without them. But it's 
marvellous what can be done without when it's a 
matter of necessity. 

Bucks unfortunately didn't get to the same room 
with me. All of us who had come in the night be- 
fore were paraded at nine o'clock next morning 
before the Colonel and those who had seen service 
or who could ride were considered sheep and sepa- 
rated from the goats who had never seen service 
nor a horse. Bucks was a goat. I could ride, — 
although the sergeant major took fifteen sulphuric 
minutes to tell me he didn't think so. And so Bucks 
and I were separated by the space of a barrack wall, 
as we thought then. It was a greater separation 



THE RANKS 17 

really, for he was still learning to ride when I went 
out to France to reinforce the fighting regiment 
which had covered itself with glory in the retreat 
from Mons. But before that day came we worked 
through to the soul of Tidworth, and of the sergeant 
major, if by any stretch of the imagination he may 
be said to have had a soul. I think he had but all 
the other men in the squadron dedicated their first 
bullet to him if they saw him in France. What a 
man ! He stands out among all my memories of 
those marvellous days of training when everything 
was different from anything I had ever done before. 
He stands before me now, a long, thin figure in 
khaki, with a face that had been kicked in by a 
horse, an eye that burnt like a branding iron, and 
picked out unpolished buttons like a magnet. In 
the saddle he was a centaur, part of the horse, 
wonderful. His long, thin thighs gripped like 
tentacles of steel. He could make an animal grunt, 
he gripped so hard. And his language ! Never in 
my life had I conceived the possibilities of blas- 
phemy to shrivel a man's soul until I heard that 
sergeant major. He ripped the Bible from cover 
to cover. He defied thunderbolts from on high and 
referred to the Almighty as though he were a scul- 
lion, — and he's still doing it. Compared to the 
wholesale murder of eight million men it was un- 
doubtedly a pin-prick but it taught us how to ride ! 

6. 

Reveille was at 5.30. 

Grunts, groans, curses, a kick, — and you were 



18 GUN FODDER 

sleepily struggling with your riding breeches and 
puttees. 

The morning bath? Left behind with all the 
other things. 

There were horses to be groomed and watered and 
fed, stables to be "mucked out", much hard and 
muscular work to be done before that pint of tea 
and slab of grease called bacon would keep body 
and soul together for the morning parade. One fed 
first and shaved and splashed one's face, neck, and 
arms with water afterwards. Have you ever cleaned 
out a stable with your bare hands and then been 
compelled to eat a meal without washing ? 

By nine o'clock one paraded with cleaned boots, 
polished buttons and burnished spurs and was in- 
spected by the sergeant major. If you were sick 
you went before the doctor instead. But it didn't 
pay to be sick. The sergeant major cured you 
first. Then as there weren't very many horses in 
barracks as yet, we were divided half into the riding 
school, half for lance and sword drill. 

Riding school was invented by the Spanish In- 
quisition. Generally it lasted an hour by which 
time one was broken on the rack and emerged shaken, 
bruised and hot, blistered by the sergeant major's 
tongue. There were men who'd never been on a 
horse more than twice in their lives but most of us 
had swung a leg over a saddle. Many in that ride 
were grooms from training stables, riders of steeple- 
chasers. But their methods were not at all those 
desired in His Majesty's Cavalry and they suffered 
like the rest of us. But the sergeant major's tongue 



THE RANKS 1J 

never stopped and we either learned the essentials 
in double-quick time or got out to a more elementary 
ride. 

It was a case of the survival of the fittest. Round 
and round that huge school, trotting with and with- 
out stirrups until one almost fell off from sheer 
agony, with and without saddle over five-foot jumps 
pursued by the hissing lash of the sergeant major's 
tongue and whip, jumping without reins, saddle or 
stirrups. The agony of sitting down for days after- 
wards ! 

Followed a fifteen-minute break, after the horses 
were led back to the stables and off -saddled, and then 
parade on the square with lance and sword. A 
lovely weapon the lance — slender, irresistible — 
but after an hour's concentrated drill one's right 
wrist became red-hot and swollen and the extended 
lance points drooped in our tired grasp like reeds 
in the wind. At night in the barrack room we used 
to have competitions to see who could drive the 
point deepest into the door panels. 

Then at eleven o'clock "stables" again: caps 
and tunics off, braces down, sleeves rolled up. We 
had a magnificent stamp of horse but they came in 
ungroomed for days and under my inexpert methods 
of grooming took several days before they looked as 
if they'd been groomed at all. 

Dinner was at one o'clock and by the time that 
hour struck one was ready to eat anything. Each 
squadron had its own dining rooms, concrete places 
with wooden tables and benches, but the eternal 
stew went down like caviar. 



20 GUN FODDER 

The afternoon parades were marching drill, 
physical exercises, harness cleaning, afternoon stables 
and finish for the day about five o'clock, unless one 
were wanted for guard or picquet. Picquet meant 
the care of the horses at night, an unenviable job. 
But guard was a twenty-four hours' duty, two hours 
on, four hours off, much coveted after a rough 
passage in the riding school. It gave one a chance 
to heal. 

Hitherto everything had been a confused mass of 
men without individuality but of unflagging cheer- 
fulness. Now in the team work of the squadron 
and the barrack room individuality began to play 
its part and under the hard and fast routine the 
cheerfulness began to yield to grousing. 

The room corporal of my room was a reenlisted 
man, a schoolmaster from Scotland, conscientious, 
liked by the men, extremely simple. I've often 
wondered whether he obtained a commission* The 
other troopers were ex-stable boys, labourers, one 
a golf caddy and one an ex-sailor who was always 
singing an interminable song about a highly immoral 
donkey. The caddy and the sailor slept on either 
side of me. They were a mixed crowd and used 
filthy language as naturally as they breathed, but 
as cheery and stout a lot as you'd wish to meet. 
Under their grey shirts beat hearts as kindly as many 
a woman's. I remember the first time I was in- 
oculated and felt like nothing on earth. 

"Christ!" said the sailor. "Has that perishin' 
doctor been stickin' his perishin' needle into you, 
Mr. Gibbs ? " — For some reason they always called 



THE RANKS 21 

me Mr. Gibbs. — " Come over here and get straight 
to bed before the perishin' stuff starts workin'. 
I've 'ad some of it in the perishin' navy." And he 
and the caddy took off my boots and clothes and 
put me to bed with gentle hands. 

The evening's noisiness was given up. Everybody 
spoke in undertones so that I might get to sleep. 
And in the morning, instead of sweeping under my 
own bed as usual, they did it for me and cleaned my 
buttons and boots because my arm was still sore. 

Can you imagine men like that nailing a kitten 
by its paws to a door as a booby-trap to blow a 
building sky high, as those Boches have done? 
Instead of bayoneting prisoners the sailor looked 
at them and said, "Ah, you poor perishin' tikes!" 
and threw them his last cigarettes. 

They taught me a lot, those men. Their ex- 
traordinary acceptation of unpleasant conditions, 
their quickness to resent injustice and speak of it 
at once, their continual cheeriness, always ready to 
sing, gave me something to compete with. On wet 
days of misery when I'd had no letters from home 
there were moments when I damned the war and 
thought with infinite regret of New York. But if 
these fellows could stick it, well, I'd had more ad- 
vantages than they'd had and, by Jove, I was going 
to stick it too. It was a matter of personal pride. 

Practically they taught me many things as well. 
It was there that they had the advantage of me. 
They knew how to wash shirts and socks and do all 
the menial work which I had never done. I had 
to learn. They knew how to dodge "fatigues" 



22 GUN FODDER 

by removing themselves just one half-minute before 
the sergeant came looking for victims. It didn't 
take me long to learn that. 

Then one saw gradually the social habit emerge, 
called "mucking in." Two men became pals and 
paired off, sharing tobacco and pay and saddle 
soap and so on. For a time I "mucked in" with 
Sailor — he was always called Sailor — and per- 
force learned the song about the Rabelaisian donkey. 
I've forgotten it now. Perhaps it's just as well. 
Then when the squadron was divided up into troops 
Sailor and I were not in the same troop and I had 
to muck in with an ex-groom. He was the only 
man who did not use filthy language. 

It's odd about that language habit. While in the 
ranks I never caught it, perhaps because I considered 
myself a bit above that sort of thing. It was so 
childish and unsatisfying. But since I have been 
an officer I think I could sometimes have almost 
challenged the sergeant major ! 

7. 

As soon as one had settled into the routine the 
days began to roll by with a monotony that was, 
had we only known it, the beginning of knowledge. 
Some genius has defined war as "months of intense 
boredom punctuated by moments of intense fear." 
We had reached the first stage. It was when the 
day's work was done that the devil stalked into one's 
soul and began asking insidious questions. The 
work itself was hard, healthy, of real enjoyment. 
Shall I ever forget those golden autumn dawns 



THE RANKS 23 

when I rode out, a snorting horse under me, upon 
the swelling downs, the uplands touched by the 
rising sun ; but in the hollows the feathery tops 
of trees poked up through the mist which lay in 
velvety clouds and everywhere a filigree of silver 
cobwebs, like strung seed pearls. It was with the 
spirit of crusaders that we galloped cross-country 
with slung lances, or charged in line upon an im- 
aginary foe with yells that would demoralise him 
before our lance points should sink into his fat 
stomach. The good smells of earth and saddlery 
and horse flesh, the lance points winking in the sun, 
were all the outward signs of great romance and one 
took a deep breath of the keen air and thanked God 
to be in it. One charged dummies with sword and 
lance and hacked and stabbed them to bits. One 
leaped from one's horse at the canter and lined a 
bank with rifles while the numbers three in each 
section galloped the horses to a flank under cover. 
One went over the brigade jumps in troop formation, 
taking pride in riding so that all horses jumped as 
one, a magnificent bit of team work that gave one a 
thrill. 

It was on one of those early morning rides that 
Sailor earned undying fame. Remember that all 
of the work was done on empty stomachs before 
breakfast and that if we came back late, a frequent 
occurrence, we received only scraps and a curse 
from the cook. On the morning in question the 
sergeant major ordered the whole troop to unbuckle 
their stirrup leathers and drop them on the ground. 
We did so. 



24 GUN FODDER 

"Now," said he, "we're going to do a brisk little 
cross-country follow-my-leader. I'm the leader and 
(a slight pause with a flash from the steely eye) 
God help the weak-backed, herring-gutted sons of 
— who don't perishin' well line up when I give the 
order to halt. Half sections right! walk, march !" 

We walked out of the barracks until we reached 
the edge of the downs and then followed such a ride 
as John Gilpin or the Baron Munchausen would 
have revelled in — perhaps. The sergeant major's 
horse could jump anything and what it couldn't 
jump it climbed over. It knew better than to refuse. 
We were indifferently mounted, some well, some 
badly. My own was a good speedy bay. The 
orders were to keep in half sections — two and two. 
For a straight half-mile we thundered across the 
level, drew rein slightly through a thick copse that 
lashed one's face with pine branches and then dropped 
over a precipice twenty feet deep. That was where 
the half-section business went to pieces, especially 
when the horses clambered up the other side. We 
had no stirrups. It was a case of remaining in the 
saddle somehow. Had I been alone I would have 
ridden five miles to avoid the places the sergeant 
major took us over, through, and under, — bramble 
hedges that tore one's clothes and hands, ditches 
that one had to ride one's horse at with both spurs, 
banks so steep that one almost expected the horse 
to come over backwards, spinneys where one had 
to lie down to avoid being swept off. At last, 
breathless, aching and exhausted, those of us who 
were left were halted and dismounted, while the 



THE RANKS 25 

sergeant major, who hadn't turned a hair, took note 
of who was missing. 

Five unfortunates had not come in. The sergeant 
major cast an eye towards the open country and re- 
mained ominously silent. After about a quarter 
of an hour the five were seen to emerge at a walk 
from behind a spinney. They came trotting up, an 
anxious expression on their faces, all except Sailor, 
who grinned from ear to ear. Instead of being al- 
lowed to fall in with us they were made to halt and 
dismount by themselves, facing us. The sergeant 
major looked at them, slowly, with an infinite con- 
tempt, as they stood stiffiy to attention. Then he 
began. 

" Look at them ! " he said to us. "Look at those 
five ..." and so on in a stinging stream, beneath 
which their faces went white with anger. 

As the sergeant major drew breath, Sailor stepped 
forward. He was no longer grinning from ear to 
ear. His face might have been cut out of stone 
and he looked at the sergeant major with a steady 
eye. 

"That's all right, Sergeant Major," he said. 
"We're all that and a perishin' lot more perhaps 
but not you nor Jesus Christ is going to make me 
do a perishin' ride like that and come back to per- 
ishin' barracks and get no perishin' breakfast and go 
on perishin' parade again at nine with not a perishin* 
thing in my perishin' stomach." 

"What do you mean?" asked the sergeant major. 

"What I says," said Sailor, standing to his guns 
while we, amazed, expected him to be slain before 



26 GUN FODDER 

our eyes. "Not a perishin' bit of breakfast do we 
get when we go back late." 

" Is that true ? " The sergeant major turned to us. 

"Yes," we said, "perishin' true!" 

"Mount!" ordered the sergeant major without 
another word and we trotted straight back to 
barracks. By the time we'd watered, off-saddled 
and fed the horses we were as usual twenty minutes 
late for breakfast. But this morning the sergeant 
major, with a face like a black cloud, marched us 
into the dining hall and up to the cook's table. 

We waited, breathless with excitement. The cook 
was in the kitchen, a dirty fellow. 

The sergeant major slammed the table with his 
whip. The cook came, wiping a chewing mouth 
with the back of his hand. 

" Breakfast for these men, quick," said the sergeant 
major. 

"All gone, sir," said the cook, "we can't — " 

The sergeant major leaned over with his face an 
inch from the cook's. "Don't you perishin' well 
answer me back," he said, "or I'll put you some- 
where where the Almighty couldn't get you out until 
I say so. Breakfast for these men, you fat, chewing 
swine, or I'll come across the table and cut your 
tripes out with my riding whip and cook them for 
breakfast! Jump, you foul-feeder!" and down 
came the whip on the table like a pistol shot. 

The cook swallowed his mouthful whole and re- 
tired, emerging presently with plenty of excellent 
breakfast and hot tea. We laughed. 

"Now," said the sergeant major, "if you don't 



THE RANKS 27 

get as good a breakfast as this to-morrow and every 
to-morrow, tell me, and I'll drop this lying bastard 
into his own grease trap." 

Sailor got drunk that night. We paid. 

8. 

The evenings were the hardest part. There was 
only Bucks to talk to, and it was never more than 
twice a week that we managed to get together. 
Generally one was more completely alone than on a 
desert island, a solitude accentuated by the fact 
that as soon as one ceased the communion of work 
which made us all brothers on the same level, they 
dropped back, for me at least, into a seething mass 
of rather unclean humanity whose ideas were not 
mine, whose language and habits never ceased to 
jar upon one's sensitiveness. There was so little 
to do. The local music hall, intensely fifth rate, 
only changed its programme once a week. The 
billiard tables in the canteen had an hour-long 
waiting list always. 

The Y.M.C.A. hadn't developed in those early 
days to its present manifold excellence. There was 
no gymnasium. The only place one had was one's 
bed in the barrack room on which one could read or 
write, not alone, because there was always a shout- 
ing incoming and outgoing crowd and cross fire of 
elementary jokes and horseplay. It seemed that 
there was never a chance of being alone, of escaping 
from this "lewd and licentious soldiery." There 
were times when the desert island called irresistibly 
in this eternal isolation of mind but not of body. 



28 GUN FODDER 

All that one had left behind, even the times when 
one was bored and out of temper, because perhaps 
one was off one's drive at the Royal and Ancient, 
or some other trivial thing like that, became so 
glorious in one's mind that the feel of the barrack 
blanket was an agony. Had one ever been bored 
in that other life ? Had one been touchy and said 
sarcastic things that were meant to hurt? Could 
it be possible that there was anything in that other 
world for which one wouldn't barter one's soul now ? 
How little one had realised, appreciated, the good 
things of that life ! One accepted them as a matter 
of course, as a matter of right. 

Now in the barrack-room introspections their real 
value stood out in the limelight of contrast and one 
saw oneself for the first time : a rather selfish, in- 
different person, thoughtless, hurrying along the 
road of life with no point of view of one's own, doing 
things because everybody else did them, accepting 
help carelessly, not realising that other people might 
need one's help in return, content with a somewhat 
shallow second-hand philosophy because untried in 
the fire of reality. This was reality, this barrack 
life. This was the first time one had been up against 
facts, the first time it was a personal conflict between 
life and oneself with no mother or family to fend off 
the unpleasant; a fact that one hadn't attempted 
to grasp. 

The picture of oneself was not comforting. To 
find out the truth about oneself is always like taking 
a pill without its sugar coating; and it was doubly 
bitter in those surroundings. 



THE RANKS 29 

Hitherto one had never been forced to do the un- 
pleasant. One simply avoided it. Now one had 
to go on doing it day after day without a hope of 
escape, without any more alleviation than a very 
occasional week-end leave. Those week-ends were 
like a mouthful of water to Dives in the flames of 
hell, — but which made the flames all the fiercer 
afterwards ! One prayed for them and loathed 
them. 

The beating heart with which one leaped out of a 
taxi in London and waited on the doorstep of home, 
heaven. The glory of a clean body and more par- 
ticularly, clean hands. It was curious how the lack 
of a bath ceased after a time to be a dreadful thing 
but the impossibility of keeping one's hands clean 
was always a poignant agony. They were always 
dirty, with cracked nails and a cut or two, and how- 
ever many times they were scrubbed, they remained 
appalling. But at home on leave, with hot water 
and stacks of soap and much manicuring, they did 
not at least make one feel uncomfortable. 

The soft voices and laughter of one's people, their 
appearance — just to be in the same room, silent 
with emotion — God, will one ever forget it ? Thin 
china to eat off, a flower on the table, soft lights, a 
napkin. — The little ones who came and fingered 
one's bandolier and cap badge and played with 
one's spurs with their tiny, clean hands — one was 
almost afraid to touch them, and when they puckered 
up their tiny mouths to kiss one good night. — I 
wonder whether they ever knew how near to tears 
that rough looking soldier-man was ? 



30 GUN FODDER 

And then in what seemed ten heart-beats one was 
saying good-by to them all. Back to barracks again 
by way of Waterloo and the last train at 9 p.m. — 
its great yellow lights and awful din, its surging 
crowd of drunken soldiers and their girls who yelled 
and hugged and screamed up and down the plat- 
form, and here and there an officer diving hurriedly 
into a first-class compartment. Presently whistles 
blew and one found oneself jammed into a carriage 
with about twelve other soldiers who fought to lean 
out of the window and see the last of their girls until 
the train had panted its way out of the long plat- 
form. Then the foul reek of Woodbine cigarettes 
while they discussed the sexual charms of those girls 
— and then a long snoring chorus for hours into the 
night, broken only by some one being sick from 
overmuch beer. 

The touch of the rosebud mouth of the baby girl 
who had kissed me good-by was still on my lips. 

9. 

It was in the first week of November that, having 
been through an exhaustive musketry course in 
addition to all the other cavalry work, we were 
"passed out" by the Colonel. I may mention in 
passing that in October, 1914, the British Cavalry 
were armed, for the first time in history, with 
bayonets in addition to lance, sword and rifle. 
There was much sarcastic reference to "towies", 
"foot-sloggers", "P.B.I." — all methods of the 
mounted man to designate infantry ; and when an 
infantry sergeant was lent to teach us bayonet 



THE RANKS SI 

fighting it seemed the last insult, even to us recruits, 
so deeply was the cavalry spirit already ingrained 
in us. 

The "passing out" by the Colonel was a day in 
our lives. It meant that, if successful, we were 
considered good enough to go and fight for our 
country : France was the Mecca of each of us. 

The day in question was bright and sunny with 
a touch of frost which made the horses blow and 
dance when, with twinkling lance-points at the 
carry, we rode out with the sergeant major, every 
bright part of our equipment polished for hours 
overnight in the barrack room amid much excited 
speculation as to our prospects. 

The sergeant major was going to give us a half- 
hour's final rehearsal of all our training before the 
Colonel arrived. Nothing went right and he damned 
and cursed without avail, until at last he threatened 
to ride us clean off the plain and lose us. It was 
very depressing. We knew we'd done badly, in 
spite of all our efforts, and when we saw, not far 
off, the Colonel, the Major and the Adjutant, with 
a group of other people riding up to put us through 
our paces, there wasn't a heart that didn't beat 
faster in hope or despair. We sat to attention like 
Indians while the officers rode round us, inspecting 
the turnout. 

Then the Colonel expressed the desire to see, a 
little troop drill. 

The sergeant major cleared his throat and like 
an 18-pounder shell the order galvanised us into 
action. We wheeled and formed and spread out 



32 GUN FODDER 

and reformed without a hitch and came to a halt 
in perfect dressing in front of the Colonel again, 
without a fault. Hope revived in despairing chests. 

Then the Colonel ordered us over the jumps in 
half sections, and at the order each half section 
started away on the half-mile course — walk, trot, 
canter, jump, steady down to trot, canter, jump — 
e da capo right round about a dozen jumps, each 
one over a different kind of obstacle, each half 
section watched far more critically perhaps by the 
rest of the troop than by the officers. My own 
mount was a bay mare which I'd ridden half a dozen 
times. When she liked she could jump anything. 
Sometimes she didn't like. 

This day I was taking no chances and drove home 
both spurs at the first jump. My other half section 
was a lance corporal. His horse was slow, preferring 
to consider each jump before it took it. 

Between jumps, without moving our heads and 
looking straight in front of us, we gave each other 
advice and encouragement. 

Said he, "Not so perishin' fast. Keep dressed, 
can't you." 

Said I, "Wake your old blighter up! What've 
you got spurs on for. — Hup ! Over. Steady, 
man, steady." 

Said he, "Nar, then, like as we are. Knee to 
knee. Let's show 'em what the perishin' Kitchener's 
mob perishin' well can do." And without a refusal 
we got round and halted in our places. 

When we'd all been round, the Colonel, with a 
faint smile on his face, requested the sergeant major 



THE RANKS 33 

to take us round as a troop — sixteen lancers knee 
to knee in the front rank and the same number be- 
hind. 

It happened that I was the centre of the front 
rank — technically known as centre guide — whose 
job it was to keep four yards from the tail of the 
troop leader and on whom the rest of the front rank 
"dressed." 

When we were well away from the officers and 
about to canter at the first jump the sergeant major's 
head turned over his shoulder. 

"Oh, you re centre guide, Gibbs, are you! Well, 
you keep your distance proper, that's all, and by 
Christ, if you refuse — " 

I don't know what fate he had in store for me had 
I missed a jump but there I was with a knee on either 
side jammed painfully hard against mine as we came 
to the first jump. It was the man on either flank 
of the troop who had the most difficult job. The 
jumps were only just wide enough and they had to 
keep their horses from swinging wide of the wings. 
It went magnificently. Sixteen horses as one in 
both ranks rose to every jump, settled down and 
dressed after each and went round the course with- 
out a hitch, refusal or fall, and at last we sat at at- 
tention facing the Colonel, awaiting the verdict 
which would either send us back for further training 
or out to — what ? Death, glory, or maiming ? 

The Major looked pleased and twisted his mous- 
tache with a grin. He had handled our squadron 
and on the first occasion of his leading us in a charge, 
he in front with drawn sword, we thundering be- 



34 GUN FODDER 

hind with lances menacing his back in a glittering 
row, we got so excited that we broke ranks and flowed 
round him, yelling like cowboys. How he damned 
us ! 

The Colonel made a little speech and complimented 
us on our work and the sergeant major for having 
trained us so well, — us, the first of Kitchener's 
"mob" to be ready. Very nice things he said and 
our hearts glowed with appreciation and excitement. 
We sat there without a movement but our chests 
puffed out like a row of pouter pigeons. 

At last he saluted us — saluted us, he, the Colonel 
— and the officers rode away, — the Major hanging 
behind a little to say with a smile that was worth 
all the cursings the sergeant major had ever given 
us, "Damn good, you fellows ! Damn good !" We 
would have followed him to hell and back at that 
moment. 

And then the sergeant major turned his horse 
and faced us. "You may think you're perishin' 
good soldiers after all that, but by Christ, I've never 
seen such a perishin' awful exhibition of carpet- 
baggers." 

But there was an unusual twinkle in his eye and 
for the first time in those two months of training 
he let us "march at ease", i.e., smoke and talk, on 
the way back to stables. 

10. 

That was the first half of the ordeal. 
The second half took place in the afternoon in 
the barrack square when we went through lance 



THE RANKS 35 

drill and bayonet exercises while the Colonel and 
the officers walked round and discussed us. At 
last we were dismissed, trained men, recruits no 
longer; and didn't we throw our chests out in the 
canteen that night ! It made me feel that the Nobel 
prize was futile beside the satisfaction of being a 
fully trained trooper in His Majesty's Cavalry, 
and in a crack regiment too, which had already shown 
the Boche that the "contemptible little army" 
had more "guts" than the Prussian Guards regi- 
ments and anything else they liked to chuck in. 

I foregathered with Bucks that night and told 
him all about it. Our ways had seemed to lie apart 
during those intensive days, and it was only on Sun- 
days that we sometimes went for long cross-country 
walks with biscuits and apples in our pockets if 
we were off duty. About once a week too we made 
a point of going to the local music hall where red- 
nosed comedians knocked each other about and fat 
ladies in tights sang slushy love songs ; and with 
the crowd we yelled choruses and ate vast quantities 
of chocolate. 

Two other things occurred during those days 
which had an enormous influence on me ; one indeed 
altered my whole career in the army. 

The first occurrence was the arrival in a car one 
evening of an American girl whom I'd known in 
New York. It was about a week after my arrival 
at Tidworth. She, it appeared, was staying with 
friends about twenty miles away. 

The first thing I knew about it was when an orderly 
came into stables about 4.30 p.m. on a golden after- 



36 GUN FODDER 

noon and told me that I was wanted at once at the 
Orderly Room. 

"What for?" said I, a little nervous. 

The Orderly Room was where all the scallawags 
were brought up before the Colonel for their various 
crimes, — and I made a hasty examination of 
conscience. 

However, I put on my braces and tunic and ran 
across the square. There in a car was the American 
girl whom I had endeavoured to teach golf in the 
days immediately previous to my enlistment. 
" Come on out and have a picnic with me," said she. 
"I've got some perfectly luscious things in a basket." 

The idea was heavenly, but it occurred to me I 
ought to get permission. So I went into the Or- 
derly Room. 

There were two officers and a lot of sergeants. 
I tiptoed up to a sergeant and explaining that a 
lady had come over to see me, asked if I could get 
out of camp for half an hour? I was very raw in 
those days, — half an hour ! 

The sergeant stared at me. Presumably ladies 
in motor cars didn't make a habit of fetching cavalry 
privates. It wasn't "laid down" in the drill book. 
However, he went over to one of the officers, — the 
Adjutant, I discovered later. 

The Adjutant looked me up and down as I re- 
peated my request, asked me my name and which 
ride I was in and finally put it to the other officer, 
who said "yes" without looking up. So I thanked 
the Adjutant, clicked to the salute and went out. 
As I walked round the front of the car, while the 



THE RANKS 37 

chauffeur cranked up, the door of the Orderly Room 
opened and the Adjutant came on to the step. He 
took a good look at the American girl and said, 
"Oh — er — Gibbs ! You can make it an hour 
if you like." 

It may amuse him to know, if the slaughter hasn't 
claimed him, that I made it exactly sixty minutes, 
much as I should have liked to make it several 
hours, and was immensely grateful to him both for 
the extra half hour and for the delightful touch of 
humour. 

What a picnic it was ! We motored away from 
that place and all its roughness and took the basket 
under a spinney in the afternoon sun which touched 
everything in a red glow. 

It wasn't only tea she gave me, but sixty precious 
minutes of great friendship, letting fall little remarks 
which helped me to go back all the more determined 
to stick to it. She renewed my faith in myself 
and gave me renewed courage, — for which I was 
unable to thank her. We British are so accursedly 
tongue-tied in these matters. I did try, but of 
course made a botch of it. 

There are some things which speech cannot deal 
with. Your taking me out that day, oh, American 
girl, and the other days later, are numbered among 
them. 

11. 

The other occurrence was also brought about by 
a woman, the woman for whom I joined up. It was 
a Sunday morning on which fortunately I was not 



38 GUN FODDER 

detailed for any fatigues and she came to take me 
out to lunch. We motored to Marlborough, lunched 
at the hotel and after visiting a racing stable some 
distance off came back to the hotel for tea, a happy 
day unflecked by any shadow. In the corner of the 
dining room were two officers with two ladies. I, 
in the bandolier and spurs of a trooper, sat with my 
back to them and my friend told me that they seemed 
to be eyeing me and making remarks. It occurred 
to me that as I had no official permission to be away 
from Tidworth they might possibly be going to make 
trouble. How little I knew what was in their minds. 
When we'd finished and got up to go one of the offi- 
cers came across as we were going out of the room 
and said, "May I speak to you a moment?" 

We both stopped. "I see you're wearing the 
numerals of my regiment," said he and went on to 
ask why I was in the ranks, why I hadn't asked for 
a commission, and strongly advised me to do so. 

I told him that I hadn't ever thought of it because 
I knew nothing about soldiering and hadn't the 
faintest idea of whether I should ever be any good 
as an officer. He waved that aside and advised me 
to apply. Then he added that he himself was going 
out to France one day in the following week and 
would I like to go as his servant? Would I? My 
whole idea was to get to France ; and this happened 
before I had been passed out by the Colonel. So he 
took down my name and particulars and said he 
would ask for me when he came to Tidworth, which 
he proposed to do in two days' time. 

Whether he ever came or not I do not know. I 



THE RANKS 39 

never saw him again. Nor did I take any steps 
with regard to a commission. My friend and I 
talked it over and I remember rather laughing at 
the idea of it. 

Not so she, however. About a fortnight later I 
was suddenly sent, for by the Colonel. 

"I hear you've applied for a commission," said he. 

It came like a bolt from the blue. But through 
my brain flashed the meeting in the Marlborough 
Hotel and I saw in it the handiwork of my friend. 

So I said, "Yes, sir." 

He then asked me where I was educated and 
whether I spoke French and what my job was in 
civil life, and finally I was sent off to fill up a form and 
then to be medically examined. 

And there the matter ended. I went on with the 
daily routine, was passed out by the Colonel and a 
very few days after that heard the glorious news 
that we were going out as a draft to France on active 
service. 

We were all in bed in the barrack room one eve- 
ning when the door opened and a sergeant came in 
and flicked on the electric light, which had only 
just been turned out. 

"Wake up, you bloodthirsty warriors," he cried. 
"Wake up. You're for a draft to-morrow, all of 
you on this list," and he read out the names of all 
of us in the room who had been passed out. "Pa- 
rade at the Quartermaster's store at nine o'clock in 
the morning." And out went the light, and the door 
slammed and a burst of cheering went up. 

And while I lay on my "biscuits", imagining 



40 GUN FODDER 

France and hearing in my mind the thunder of guns 
and wondering what our first charge would be like, 
the machinery which my friend had set in motion 
was rolling slowly (shades of the War Office !) but 
surely. My name had been submerged in the 
"usual channels", but was receiving first aid, all 
unknown to me, of a most vigorous description. 

12. 

Shall I ever forget that week-end, with all its 
strength of emotions running the gamut from exalta- 
tion to blank despair and back again to the wildest 
enthusiasm ? 

We paraded at the Quartermaster's stores and 
received each a kit bag, two identity discs — the 
subject of many gruesome comments — a jackknife, 
mess tin, water bottle, haversack, and underclothes. 
Thus were we prepared for the killing. 

Then the Major appeared and we fell in before 
him. 

"Now which of you men want to go to the front ?" 
said he. "Any man who wants to, take one pace 
forward." 

As one man the whole lot of us, about thirty, 
took one pace forward. 

The Major smiled. "Good," said he. "Any 
man not want to go — prove." 

No man proved. 

"Well, look here," said the Major, "I hate to 
disappoint anybody, but only twenty-eight of you 
can go. You'll have to draw lots." 

Accordingly bits of paper were put into a hat, 



THE RANKS 41 

thirty scraps of paper, two of them marked with 
crosses. Was it a sort of inverted omen that the 
two who drew the crosses would never find them- 
selves under little mounds in France? 

We drew in turn, excitement running high as 
paper after paper came out blank. My heart 
kicked within me. How I prayed not to draw a 
cross. But I did ! 

Speechless with despair the other man who drew 
a cross and I received the good-natured chaff of the 
rest. 

I saw them going out, to leave this accursed place 
of boredom and make-believe, for the real thing, 
the thing for which we had slaved and sweated and 
suffered. We two were to be left. We weren't 
to go on sharing the luck with these excellent fellows 
united to us by the bonds of fellow-striving, whom we 
knew in sickness and health, drunk and sober. 

We had to remain behind, eating our hearts out 
to wait for the next draft — a lot of men whom we 
did not know, strangers with their own jokes and 
habits — possibly a fortnight of hanging about. 
The day was a Friday and our pals were supposed 
to be going at any moment. The other unlucky 
man and myself came to the conclusion that con- 
solation might be found in a long week-end leave 
and that if we struck while the iron of sympathy 
was hot the Major might be inclined to lend a friendly 
ear. This indeed he did and within an hour we were 
in the London train on that gloomy Friday morn- 
ing, free as any civilian till midnight of the following 
Tuesday. Thus the Major's generosity. The only 



42 GUN FODDER 

proviso was that we had both to leave telegraphic 
addresses in case — 

But in spite of that glorious week-end in front of 
us, we refused to be consoled, yet, and insisted on 
telling the other occupants of the carriage of our 
rotten luck. We revelled in gloom and extraneous 
sympathy until Waterloo showed up in the murk 
ahead. Then I'm bound to confess my own mental 
barometer went up with a jump and I said good-by 
to my fellow lancer, who was off to pursue the light 
o' love in Stepney, with an impromptu Te Deum 
in my heart. 

My brother, with whom I spent all my week-ends 
in those days, had a house just off the Park. He 
put in his time looking like a rather tired admiral, 
most of whose nights were passed looking for Zep- 
pelins and yearning for them to come within range 
of his beloved "bundooks", which were in the neigh- 
bourhood of the Admiralty. Thither I went at 
full speed in a taxi — they still existed in those days 
— and proceeded to wallow in a hot bath, borrowing 
my brother's bath salts (or were they his wife's?), 
clean "undies" and hair juice with a liberal hand. 
It was a comic sight to see us out together in the 
crowded London streets, he all over gold lace, me 
just a Tommy with a cheap swagger stick under my 
arm. Subalterns, new to the game, saluted him 
punctiliously. I saluted them. And when we 
met generals or a real admiral we both saluted to- 
gether. The next afternoon, Saturday, at tea time 
a telegram came. We were deep in armchairs in 
front of a gorgeous fire, with muffins sitting in the 



THE RANKS 43 

hearth and softly shaded electric lights throwing a 
glow over pictures and backs of books and the piano 
which, after the barrack room, made up as near 
heaven as I've ever been. The telegram was for 
me, signed by the Adjutant. 

"Return immediately." 

It was the echo of a far-off boot and saddle. — 
I took another look round the room. Should I 
ever see it again ? My brother's eye met mine and 
we rose together. 

"Well, I must be getting along," said I. 
"Cheero, old son." 

"I'll come with you to the station," said he. 

I shook my head. "No, please don't bother. — 
Don't forget to write." 

"Rather not. — Good luck, old man." 

"Thanks." 

We went down to his front door. I put on my 
bandolier and picked up my haversack. 

"Well — so long." 

We shook hands. 

"God bless you." 

I think we said it together and then the door closed 
softly behind me. 

Partir, c'est mourir un peu. — Un peu. — God ! 

13. 

The next day, Sunday, we all hung about in a sort 
of uneasy waiting, without any orders. 

It gave us all time to write letters home. If I 
rightly remember, absolute secrecy was to be main- 
tained, so we were unable even to hint at our depar- 



44 GUN FODDER 

ture or to say good-by. It was probably just as well, 
but they were difficult letters to achieve. So we 
tied one identity disc to our braces and slung the 
other round our necks on a string and did rather more 
smoking than usual. 

Next morning, however, all was bustle. The 
orders had come in and we paraded in full fighting 
kit in front of the guardroom. 

The Colonel came on parade and in a silence 
that was only broken by the beating of our hearts 
told us we were going out to face the Boche for our 
King and Country's sake, to take our places in the 
ranks of a very gallant regiment, and he wished us 
luck. 

We gave three rather emotional cheers and 
marched away with our chins high, followed by the 
cheers of the whole barracks who had turned out to 
see us off. Just as we were about to entrain, the 
Major trotted up on his big charger and shook us 
individually by the hand and said he wished he were 
coming with us. His coming was a great compliment 
and every man of us appreciated it to the full. 

The harbour was a wonderful sight when we got 
in late that afternoon. Hundreds of arc lights lit 
up numbers of ships and at each ship was a body of 
troops entraining, — English, Scotch and Irish, 
cavalry, gunners and infantry. At first glance it 
appeared a hopeless tangle, a babel of yelling men all 
getting into each other's way. But gradually the 
eye tuned itself up to the endless kaleidoscope and 
one saw that absolute order prevailed. Every single 
man was doing a job and the work never ceased. 



THE RANKS 45 

We were not taking horses and marched in the 
charge of an officer right through the busy crowd 
and halted alongside a boat which already seemed 
packed with troops. But after a seemingly endless 
wait we were marched on board and, dodging men 
stripped to the waist who were washing in buckets, 
we climbed down iron ladders into the bowels of the 
hold, were herded into a corner and told to make 
ourselves comfortable. Tea would be dished out 
in half an hour. 

Holds are usually iron. This was. Furthermore 
it had been recently red-leaded. Throw in a strong 
suggestion of garlic and more than a hint of sea-sick- 
ness and you get some idea of the perfume that 
greeted us, friendly-like. 

'The comments, entirely good-natured, were un- 
printable. There were no bunks. We had one 
blanket each and a greatcoat. My thoughts turned 
to the first-class stateroom of the Caronia in which 
only four months previously I had had no thought 
of war. The accepted form of romance and the 
glamour of war have been altered. There are no 
cheering crowds and fluttering handkerchiefs and 
brass bands. The new romance is the light of the 
moon flickering on darkened ships that creep one 
after the other through the mine barrier out into 
deep waters, turning to silver the foam ripped by the 
bows, picking out the white expressionless faces of 
silent thousands of khaki-clad men lining the rail, 
following the will-o'-the-wisp which beckoned to a 
strange land. 

How many of them knew what they were going 



46 GUN FODDER 

to fight for? How many of them realised the un- 
forgetable hell they were to be engulfed in, the 
sacrifice which they so readily made of youth, love, 
ambition, life itself — and to what end ? To give 
the lie to one man who wished to alter the face of 
the world ? To take the part of the smaller country 
trampled and battered by the bully ? To save from 
destruction the greasy skins of dirty-minded poli- 
ticians, thinking financially or even imperially, but 
staying at home ? 

God knows why most of us went. 

But the sting of the Channel wind as we set our 
faces to the enemy drove all reason from the mind 
and filled it with a mighty exultation. If Death 
were there to meet us, well, it was all in the game. 

14. ' 

We climbed up from the hold next morning to find 
ourselves in Portsmouth harbour. The word sub- 
marines ran about the decks. There we waited all 
day, and again under cover of dark made our way 
out to open water, reaching Havre about six o'clock 
next morning. 

We were marched ashore in the afternoon and 
transferred to another boat. Nobody knew our 
destination and the wildest guesses were made. 
The new boat was literally packed. There was no 
question of going down into a hold. We were lucky 
to get sufficient deck space to lie down on, and just 
before getting under way, it began to rain. There 
were some London Scottish at our end of the deck 
who, finding that we had exhausted our rations, 



THE RANKS 47 

shared theirs with us. There was no question of 
sleeping. It was too cold and too uncomfortable. 
So we sang. There must have been some two 
thousand of us on board and all those above deck 
joined in choruses of all the popular songs as they 
sat hunched up or lying like rows of sardines in the 
rain. Dawn found us shivering, passing little vil- 
lages on either bank of the river as we neared Rouen. 
The early-rising inhabitants waved and their voices 
came across the water, "Vivent les Anglais! A has 
les Bodies!" And the sun came out as we waved 
our shaving brushes at them in reply. We eventu- 
ally landed in the old cathedral city and formed 
up and marched away across the bridge, with every- 
body cheering and throwing flowers until we came to 
La Bruyere camp. 

Hundreds of bell tents, thousands of horses, and 
mud over the ankles ! That was the first impression 
of the camp. It wasn't until we were divided off 
into tents and had packed our equipment tight 
round the tent pole that one had time to notice 
details. 

We spent about nine days in La Bruyere camp 
and we groomed horses from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. every 
day, wet or fine. The lines were endless and the 
mud eternal. It became a nightmare, relieved only 
by the watering of the horses. The water was 
about a kilometer and a half distant. We mounted 
one horse and led two more each and in an endless 
line splashed down belly-deep in mud past the 
hospital where the slightly wounded leaned over the 
rail and exchanged badinage. Sometimes the sis- 



48 GUN FODDER 

ters gave us cigarettes, for which we called down bless- 
ings on their heads. 

It rained most of the time and we stood ankle- 
deep all day in the lines, grooming and shovelling 
away mud. But all the time jokes were hurled 
from man to man although the rain dripped down 
their faces and necks. We slept, if I remember 
rightly, twenty men in a tent, head outwards, feet 
to the pole, piled on top of each other, — wet, hot, 
aching. Oh, those feet, the feet of tired heroes, but 
unwashed. And it was impossible to open the tent 
flap because of the rain. — Fortunately it was cold 
those nights and one smoked right up to the moment 
of falling asleep. Only two per cent of passes to visit 
the town were allowed, but the camp was only barb- 
wired and sentried on one side. The other side was 
open to the pine woods, and very pretty they were as 
we went cross-country towards the village of St. 
Etienne from which a tramcar ran into Rouen in 
about twenty minutes. The military police posted 
at the entrance to the town either didn't know their 
job or were good fellows of Nelsonian temperament, 
content to turn a blind eye. From later experience 
I judge that the former was probably the case. Be 
that as it may, several hundreds of us went in with- 
out official permission nearly every night and, con- 
sidering all things, were most orderly. Almost the 
only man I ever saw drunk was, paradoxically 
enough, a policeman. He tried to place my com- 
panion and myself under arrest, but was so far gone 
that he couldn't write down our names and numbers 
and we got off. The hand of Fate was distinctly 



THE RANKS 49 

in it for had I been brought up and crimed for being 
loose in the town without leave it might have 
counted against me when my commission was being 
considered. 

One evening, the night before we left for the front, 
we went down for a bath, the last we should get for 
many a day. On our way we paid a visit to the 
cathedral. It was good to get out of the crowded 
streets into the vast gloom punctured by pin points 
of candlelight, with only faint footfalls and the 
squeak of a chair to disturb the silence. For per- 
haps half an hour we knelt in front of the high altar, 
— quite unconsciously the modern version of that 
picture of a knight in armour kneeling, holding up 
his sword as a cross before the altar. It is called 
the Vigil, I believe. We made a little vigil in khaki 
and bandoliers and left the cathedral with an ex- 
traordinary confidence in the morrow. There was 
a baby being baptised at the font. It was an odd 
thing seeing that baby just as we passed out. It 
typified somewhat the reason of our going forth to 
fight. 

The bath was amusing. The doors were being 
closed as we arrived and I had just the time to stick 
my foot in the crack, much to the annoyance of the 
attendant. I blarneyed him in French and at last 
pushed into the hall, only to be greeted by a cry of 
indignation from the lady in charge of the ticket 
office. She was young, however, and pretty, and, 
determined to get a bath, I played upon her feelings 
to the extent of my vocabulary. At first she was 
adamant. The baths were closed. I pointed out 



50 GUN FODDER 

that the next morning we were going to the front 
to fight for France. She refused to believe it. I 
asked her if she had a brother. She said she hadn't. 
I congratulated her on not being agonised by the 
possibilities of his death from hour to hour. She 
smiled. 

My heart leaped with hope and I reminded her 
that as we were possibly going to die for her the 
least she could do was to let us die clean. She looked 
me straight in the eye. There was a twinkle in 
hers. "You will not die," she said. Somehow one 
doesn't associate the selling of bath tickets with 
the calling of prophet. But she combined the two. 
And the bath was gloriously hot. 

15. 

That nine days at La Bruyere did not teach us 
very much, — not even the realisation of the vital 
necessity of patience. We looked upon each day 
as wasted because we weren't up the line. Every- 
where were preparations of war, but we yearned for 
the sound of guns. Even the blue-clad figures who 
exchanged jokes with us over the hospital railing 
conveyed nothing of the grim tragedy of which we 
were only on the fringe. They were mostly con- 
valescent. It is only the shattered who are being 
pulled back to life by a thread who make one curse 
the war. We looked about like new boys in a school, 
interested but knowing nothing of the workings, 
reading none of the signs. This all bored us. We 
wanted the line with all the persistence of the com- 
pletely ignorant. 



THE RANKS 51 

The morning after our bath we got it. There 
was much bustle and running and cursing and 
finally we had our saddles packed, and a day's 
rations in our haversacks and a double feed in 
the nose bags. 

The cavalry man in full marching order bears a 
strange resemblance to a travelling ironmonger 
and rattles like the banging of old tins. The small 
man has almost to climb up the near foreleg of his 
horse, so impossible is it to get a leg anywhere near 
the stirrup iron with all his gear on. My own method 
was to stick the lance in the ground by the butt, 
climb with infinite labour and heavings into the 
saddle and come back for the lance when arranged 
squarely on the horse. 

Eventually everything was accomplished and we 
were all in the saddle and were inspected to see that 
we were complete in every detail. Then we rode 
out of that muddy camp in sections — four abreast 
— and made our way down towards the station. 
It was a real touch of old-time romance, that ride. 
The children ran shouting, and people came out of 
the shops to wave their hands and give us fruit and 
wish us luck, and the girls blew kisses, and through 
the hubbub the clatter of our horses over the cobbles 
and the jingle of stirrup striking stirrup made music 
that stirred one's blood. 

There was a long train of cattle trucks waiting 
for us at the station and into these we put our horses, 
eight to each truck, fastened by their ropes from 
the head collar to a ring in the roof. In the two- 
foot space between the two lots of four horses fac- 



52 GUN FODDER 

ing each other were put the eight saddles and blan- 
kets and a bale of hay. 

Two men were detailed to stay with the horses 
in each truck while the rest fell in and were marched 
away to be distributed among the remaining empty 
trucks. I didn't altogether fancy the idea of look- 
ing after eight frightened steeds in that two-foot 
alleyway, but before I could fall in with the rest I 
was detailed by the sergeant. 

That journey was a nightmare. My fellow stable- 
man was a brainless idiot who knew even less about 
the handling of horses than I did. 

The train pulled out in the growing dusk of a 
cold November evening, the horses snorting and 
starting at every jolt, at every signal and telegraph 
pole that we passed. When they pawed with their 
front feet we, sitting on the bale of hay, had to dodge 
with curses. There was no sand or bedding and it 
was only the tightness with which they were packed 
together that kept them on their feet. Every light 
that flashed by drew frightened snorts. We spent 
an hour standing among them, saying soothing things 
and patting their necks. We tried closing the slid- 
ing doors, but at the end of five minutes the heat 
splashed in great drops of moisture from the roof 
and the smell was impossible. Eventually I broke 
the bale of hay and threw some of that down to give 
them a footing. 

There was a lamp in the corner of the truck. I 
told the other fellow to light it. He said he had no 
matches. So I produced mine and discovered that 
I had only six left. We used five to find out that 



THE RANKS 53 

the lamp had neither oil nor wick. We had just 
exhausted our vocabularies over this when the 
train entered a tunnel. At no time did the train 
move at more than eight miles an hour and the tun- 
nel seemed endless. At times I still dream of that 
tunnel and wake up in a cold sweat. 

As our truck entered, great billows of smoke rushed 
into it. The eight horses tried as one to rear up and 
crashed their heads against the roof. The noise 
was deafening and it was pitch dark. I felt for the 
door and slid it shut while the horses blew and tugged 
at their ropes in a blind panic. Then there was a 
heavy thud, followed by a yell from the other man 
and a furious squealing. 

"Are you all right?" I shouted, holding on to 
the head collar of the nearest beast. 

"Christ!" came the answer. "There's a 'orse 
down and I'm jammed up against the door 'ere. 
Come and get me out, for Christ's sake." 

My heart was pumping wildly. 

The smoke made one gasp and there was a furious 
stamping and squealing and a weird sort of blowing 
gurgle which I could not define. 

Feeling around I reached the next horse's head 
collar and staggered over the pile of saddlery. As 
I leaned forward to get to the third, something 
whistled past my face and I heard the sickening 
noise of a horse's hoof against another horse, fol- 
lowed by a squeal. I felt blindly and touched a 
flank where a head should have been. One of them 
had swung round and was standing with his fore 
feet on the fallen horse and was lashing out with 



54 GUN FODDER 

both hind feet, while my companion was jammed 
against the wall of the truck by the fallen animal 
presumably. 

And still that cursed tunnel did not come to an end. 
I yelled again to see if he were all right and his 
fruity reply convinced me that at least there was no 
damage done. So I patted the kicker and squeezed 
in to his head and tried to get him round. It was 
impossible to get past, over or under, and the brute 
wouldn't move. There was nothing for it but to 
remain as we were until out of the tunnel. And then 
I located the gurgle. It was the fallen horse, tied 
up short by the head collar to the roof, being steadily 
strangled. It was impossible to cut the rope. 
A loose horse in that infernal melee was worse than 
one dead — or at least choking. But I cursed and 
pulled and heaved in my efforts to get him up. 

By this time there was no air and one's lungs 
seemed on the point of bursting. The roof rained 
sweat upon our faces and every moment I expected 
to get a horse's hoof in my face. 

How I envied that fellow jammed against the 
truck. At last we came out into the open again, 
and I slid back the door, and shoved my head out- 
side and gulped in the fresh air. Then I untied 
the kicker and somehow, I don't know how, got 
him round into his proper position and tied him up, 
with a handful of hay all round to steady their nerves. 

The other man was cursing blue blazes all this time, 
but eventually I cut the rope of the fallen horse, and 
after about three false starts he got on his feet again 
and was retied. The man was not hurt. He had 



THE RANKS 55 

been merely wedged. So we gave some more hay 
all round, cursed a bit more to ease ourselves and 
then went to the open door for air. A confused 
shouting from the next truck reached us. After 
many yells we made out the following, "Pass the 
word forward that the train's on fire." 

All the stories I'd ever heard of horses being burnt 
alive raced through my brain in a fraction of a second. 

We leaned to the truck in front and yelled. No 
answer. The truck was shut. 

"Climb on the roof," said I, "and go forward." 
The other man obeyed and disappeared into the 
dark. 

Minutes passed, during which I looked back and 
saw a cloud of smoke coming out of a truck far along 
the train. 

Then a foot dropped over from the roof and my 
companion climbed back. 

"Better go yourself," he said. "I carnt mike 
'im understand. He threw lumps of coal at me from 
the perishin' engine." 

So I climbed on to the roof of the swaying coach, 
got my balance and walked forward till a yard-wide 
jump to the next roof faced me in the darkness. 

"Lord !" thought I,- "if I didn't know that other 
lad had been here, I shouldn't care about it. How- 
ever — " I took a strong leap and landed, slipping 
to my hands and knees. 

There were six trucks between me and the engine 
and the jumps varied in width. I got there all 
right and screamed to the engine driver, "Incendie! 
— Incendie!" 



56 GUN FODDER 

He paused in the act of throwing coal at me and 
I screamed again. Apparently he caught it, for 
first peering back along all the train, he dived at a 
lever and the train screamed to a halt. I was 
mighty thankful. I hadn't looked forward to going 
back the way I came and I climbed quickly down 
to the rails. A sort of guard with a lantern and an 
official appearance climbed out of a box of sorts 
and demanded to know what was the matter, and 
when I told him, called to me to follow and began 
doubling back along the track. 

I followed. The train seemed about a mile long 
but eventually we reached a truck, full of men and 
a rosy glare, from which a column of smoke bellied 
out. The guard flashed his lantern in. 

The cursed thing wasn't on fire at all. The men 
were burning hay in a biscuit tin, singing merrily, 
just keeping themselves warm. 

I thought of the agony of those jumps in the dark 
from roof to roof and laughed. But I got my own 
back. They couldn't see us in the dark, so in short 
snappy sentences I ordered them to put the fire out 
immediately. And they thought I was an officer 
and did so. 

16. 

The rest of the night passed in an endeavour to 
get to sleep in a sitting position on the bale of hay. 
From time to time one dozed off, but it was too cold 
and the infernal horses would keep on pawing. 

Never was a night so long and it wasn't till eight 
o'clock in the morning that we ran into Hazebrouck 



THE RANKS 57 

and stopped. By this time we were so hungry that 
food was imperative. On the station was a great 
pile of rifles and bandoliers and equipment generally, 
all dirty and rusty, and in a corner some infantry 
were doing something round a fire. 

"Got any tea, chum?" said I. 

He nodded a Balaklava helmet. 

We were on him in two leaps with extended dixies. 
It saved our lives, that tea. We were chilled to 
the bone and had only bully beef and biscuits, of 
course, but I felt renewed courage surge through me 
with every mouthful. 

"What's all that stuff?" I asked, pointing to the 
heap of equipments. 

"Dead men's weapons," said he, lighting a "gas- 
per." Somehow it didn't sound real. One couldn't 
picture all the men to whom that had belonged dead. 
Nor did it give one anything of a shock. One just 
accepted it as a fact without thinking, "I wonder 
whether my rifle and sword will ever join that heap ?" 
The idea of my being killed was absurd, fantastic. 
Any of these others, yes, but somehow not myself. 
Never at any time have I felt anything but extreme 
confidence in the fact — yes, fact — that I should 
come through, in all probability, un wounded. I 
thought about it often but always with the certainty 
that nothing would happen to me. 

I decided that if I were killed I should be most 
frightfully angry ! There were so many things to 
be done with life, so much beauty to be found, so 
many ambitions to be realised, that it was impossible 
that I should be killed. All this dirt and discomfort 



58 GUN FODDER 

was just a necessary phase to the greater appreciation 
of everything. 

I can't explain it. Perhaps there isn't any ex- 
planation. But never at any time have I seen the 
shell or bullet with my name on it, — as the saying 
goes. And yet somehow that pile of broken gear 
filled one with a sense of the pity of it all, the utter 
folly of civilization which had got itself into such 
an unutterable mess that blood-letting was the 
only way out. — I proceeded to strip to the waist 
and shave out of a horse-bucket of cold water. 

There was a cold drizzle falling when at last we 
had watered the horses, fed and saddled them up, 
and were ready to mount. It increased to a steady 
downpour as we rode away in half sections and 
turned into a muddy road lined with the eternal 
poplar. In the middle of the day we halted, numbed 
through, on the side of a road, and watered the 
horses again, and snatched a mouthful of biscuit 
and bully and struggled to fill a pipe with icy fingers. 
Then on again into the increasing murk of a raw 
afternoon. 

Thousands of motor lorries passed like an end- 
less chain. Men muffled in greatcoats emerged 
from farmhouses and faintly far came the sound 
of guns. 

The word went round that we were going up into 
the trenches that night. Heaven knows who started 
it, but I found it a source of spiritual exaltation that 
helped to conquer the discomfort of that ride. Every 
time a trickle ran down one's neck one thought, 
"It doesn't matter. This is the real thing. We 



THE RANKS 59 

are going up to-night," and visualised a Hun over the 
sights of one's rifle. 

Presently the flames of fires lit up the murk and 
shadowy forms moved round them which took no 
notice of us as we rode by. 

At last in pitch darkness we halted at a road cross- 
ing and splashed into a farmyard that was nearly 
belly deep in mud. Voices came through the gloom, 
and after some indecision and cursing we off-saddled 
in a stable lit by a hurricane lamp, hand-rubbed the 
horses, blanketed them and left them comfortable 
for the night. 

We were given hot tea and bread and cheese and 
shepherded into an enormous barn piled high with 
hay. Here and there twinkled candles in biscuit 
tins and everywhere were men sitting and lying on 
the hay, the vague whiteness of their faces just 
showing. It looked extremely comfortable. 

But when we joined them — the trench rumour 
was untrue — we found that the hay was so wet 
that a lighted match thrown on it fizzled and went 
out. The rain came through innumerable holes 
in the roof and the wind made the candles burn all 
one-sided. However, it was soft to lie on, and when 
my "chum" and I had got on two pairs of dry socks 
each and had snuggled down together with two blan- 
kets over our tunics and greatcoats, and mufflers 
round our necks, and Balaklava helmets over our 
heads we found we could sleep warm till reveille. 

The sock question was difficult. One took off 
soaking boots and puttees at night and had to put 
them on again still soaking in the morning. The 



60 GUN FODDER 

result was that by day our feet were always ice-cold 
and never dry. We never took anything else off 
except to wash, or to groom horses. 

The next morning I had my first lesson in real 
soldiering. The results were curious. 

The squadron was to parade in drill order at 9 
a.m. We had groomed diligently in the chilly dawn. 
None of the horses had been clipped, so it consisted 
in getting the mud off rather than really grooming, 
and I was glad to see that my horse had stood the 
train journey and the previous day's ride without 
any damage save a slight rubbing of his tail. At 
about twenty minutes to nine, shaved and washed, 
I went to the stables to saddle up for the parade. 
Most of the others in that stable were nearly ready 
by the time I got there and to my dismay I found 
that they had used all my gear. There was nothing 
but the horse and the blanket left, — no saddle, no 
head collar and bit, no rifle, no sword, no lance. 
Everything had disappeared. I dashed round and 
tried to lay hands on some one else's property. 
They were too smart and eventually they all turned 
out, leaving me. The only saddle in the place hadn't 
been cleaned for months and I should have been 
ashamed to ride it. Then the sergeant appeared, 
a great, red-faced, bad-tempered-looking man. 

I decided on getting the first blow in. So I went 
up and told him that all my things had been 
" pinched." Could he tell me where I could find 
some more ? 

His reply would have blistered the paint off a 
door. His adjectives concerning me made me want 



THE RANKS 61 

to hit him. But one cannot hit one's superior 
officer in the army — more's the pity — on occa- 
sions like that. So we had a verbal battle. I told 
him that if he didn't find me everything down to 
lance buckets I shouldn't appear on parade and that 
if he chose to put me under arrest, so much the 
better, as the Major would then find out how damned 
badly the sergeant ran his troop. 

It was a good bluff. Bit by bit he hunted up a 
head collar, a saddle, sword, lance, etc. Needless 
to say they were all filthy and I wished all the bullets 
in Germany on the dirty dog who had pinched my 
clean stuff. However, I was on parade just half a 
minute before the Major came round to inspect 
us. He stopped at me, his eye taking in the rusty 
bit and stirrup irons, the coagulations on the bridle, 
the general damnableness of it all. It wasn't nice. 

"Did you come in last night?" The voice was 
hard. 

"Yes, sir." 

"Did you come up from the base with your ap- 
pointments in that state?" 

"No, sir." 

"What do you mean?" 

The sergeant was looking apoplectic behind him. 

"These aren't my things, sir," said I. 

"Whose are they?" 

"I don't know, sir." 

"Where are your things?" 

" They were in the stables at reveille, sir, but they'd 
all gone when I went to saddle up. The horse is 
the only thing I brought with me, sir." 



62 GUN FODDER 

The whole troop was sitting at attention, listening, 
and I hoped that the man who had stolen everything 
heard this dialogue and was quaking in his wet boots. 

The Major turned. "What does this mean, 
Sergeant ? " 

There was a vindictive look in the sergeant's 
eye as he spluttered out an unconvincing reply that 
"these new fellows wanted nursemaids and weren't 
'alf nippy enough in lookin' arter 'emselves." 

The Major considered it for a moment, told me 
that I must get everything clean for the next parade 
and passed on. 

At least I was not under arrest, but it wasn't 
good enough on the first morning to earn the Major's 
scorn through no fault of my own. I wanted some 
one's blood. 

Each troop leader, a subaltern, was given written 
orders by the Major and left to carry them out. 
Our own troop leader didn't seem to understand 
his orders and by the time the other three troops 
had ridden away he was still reading his paper. 
The Major returned and explained, asked him if all 
was clear, and getting yes for an answer, rode off. 

The subaltern then asked the sergeant if he had 
a map ! 

What was even more curious, the sergeant said 
yes. The subaltern said we had to get to a place 
called Fletre within three quarters of an hour and 
they proceeded to try and find it on the sergeant's 
map without any success for perhaps five minutes. 

During that time the troopers around me made 
remarks in undertones, most ribald remarks. We 



THE RANKS 63 

had come through Fletre the previous day and I 
remembered the road. So I turned to a lance cor- 
poral on my right and said, "Look here, I know the 
way. Shall I tell him?" 

"Yes, tell him for Christ's sake!" said the lance 
corporal. "It's too perishin' cold to go on sitting 
'ere." 

So I took a deep breath and all my courage in 
both hands and spoke. "I beg your pardon, sir," 
said I. "I know Fletre." 

The subaltern turned round on his horse. "Who 
knows the place ? " he said. 

"I do, sir," and I told him how to get there. 

Without further comment he gave the word to 
advance in half sections and we left the parade 
ground, but instead of turning to the left as I had 
said, he led us straight on at a good sharp trot. 

More than half an hour later, when we should 
have been at the pin point in Fletre, the subaltern 
halted us at a crossroads in open country and again 
had a map consultation with the sergeant. Again 
it was apparently impossible to locate either the 
crossroads or the rendezvous. 

But in the road were two peasants coming 
towards us. He waited till they came up and then 
asked them the way in bad German. They looked 
at him blankly, so he repeated his question in worse 
French. His pronunciation of Fletre puzzled them 
but at last one of them guessed it and began a stream 
of explanations and pointings. 

"What the hell are they talking about?" said the 
subaltern to the sergeant. 



64 GUN FODDER 

The lance corporal nudged me. "Did you under- 
stand?" 

"Yes," said I. 

"Tell him again," he said. "Go on." 

So again I begged his pardon and explained what 
the peasants had told him. He looked at me for a 
moment oddly. I admit that it wasn't usual for a 
private to address his officer on parade without being 
first spoken to. But this was war, the world war, 
and the old order changeth. Anyhow I was told to 
ride in front of the troop as guide and did and 
brought the troop to the rendezvous about twenty 
minutes late. 

The Major was not pleased. 

Later in the day the subaltern came around the 
stables and, seeing me, stopped and said, "Oh — 
er — you ! " 

I came to attention behind the horse. 

"What's your name?" said he. 

I told him. 

"Do you talk French?" 

"Yes, sir." 

"Where were you educated?" 

"France and Oxford University, sir." 

"Oh!" slightly surprised. "Er — all right, get 
on with your work" — and whether it was he or the 
sergeant I don't know, but I had four horses to groom 
that morning instead of two. 

From that moment I decided to cut out being 
intelligent and remain what the French call a 
"simple" soldier. 

By a strange coincidence there was a nephew of 



THE RANKS 65 

that subaltern in the Brigade of Gunners to which I 
was posted when I received a commission. It is 
curious how accurately nephews sum up uncles. 

17. 

When we did not go out on drill orders like that we 
began the day with what is called rough exercise. 
It was. In the foggy dawn, swathed in scarfs and 
Balaklava helmets, one folded one's blanket on the 
horse, bitted him, mounted, took another horse on 
either side and in a long column followed an invisible 
lance corporal across ploughed fields, over ditches, 
and along roads at a good stiff trot that jarred one's 
spine. It was generally raining and always so cold 
that one never had the use of either hands or feet. 
The result was that if one of the unbitted led horses 
became frolicsome it was even money that he would 
pull the rope out of one's hands and canter off 
blithely down the road, — for which one was cursed 
bitterly by the sergeant on one's return. The rest 
of the day was divided between stables and fatigues 
in that eternal heart-breaking mud. One laid 
brick paths and brushwood paths and within twenty- 
four hours they had disappeared under mud. It 
was shovelled away in sacks and wheelbarrows and 
it oozed up again as if by magic. One made herring- 
bone drains and they merged in the mud. There 
seemed to be no method of competing with it. In 
the stables the horses stood in it knee-deep. As 
soon as one had finished grooming, the brute seemed 
to take a diabolical pleasure in lying down in it. 
It became a nightmare. 



66 GUN FODDER 

The sergeant didn't go out of his way to make 
things easier for any of us and confided most of the 
dirtier, muddier jobs to me. There seemed to be 
always something unpleasant that required "intel- 
ligence", so he said, and in the words of the army 
I "clicked." The result was that I was happiest 
when I was on guard, a twenty-four-hour duty 
which kept me more or less out of the mud and en- 
tirely out of his way. 

The first time I went on I was told by the N.C.O. 
in charge that no one was to come through the hedge 
that bounded the farm and the road after lights 
out and if any one attempted to do so I was to shoot 
on sight. So I marched up and down my short 
beat in the small hours between two and four, lis- 
tening to the far-off muttering of guns and watch- 
ing the Verey lights like a miniature firework dis- 
play, praying that some spy would try and enter 
the gap in the hedge. My finger was never very 
far from the trigger and my beat was never more 
than two yards from the hedge. I didn't realise 
then that we were so far from the line that the chances 
of a strolling Hun were absurd. Looking back on 
it I am inclined to wonder whether the N.C.O. 
didn't tell me to shoot on sight because he knew 
that the sergeant's billet was down that road and 
the hedge was a short cut. The sergeant wasn't 
very popular. 

There was an estaminet across the road from the 
farm and the officers had arranged for us to have 
the use of the big room. It was a godsend, that 
estaminet, with its huge stove nearly red-hot, its 



THE RANKS 67 

bowls of coffee and the single glass of raw cognac 
which they were allowed to sell us. The evenings 
were the only time one was ever warm and although 
there was nothing to read except some old and torn 
magazines we sat there in the fetid atmosphere just 
to keep warm. 

The patron talked vile French but was a kindly 
soul, and his small boy Gaston, aged about seven, 
became a great friend of mine. He used to bring 
me my coffee, his tiny dirty hands only just big 
enough to hold the bowl, and then stand and talk 
while I drank it, calling me "thou." 

"T'es pas anglais, dis?" 

And I laughed and said I was French. 

"Alors comment qu' fes avec eux, dis?'* 

And when one evening he came across and looked 
over my shoulder as I was writing a letter he said, 
"Que que t'ecris, dis?" 

I told him I was writing in English. 

He stared at me and then called out shrilly, 
"Papa! Via VFrangais qiiecrit en anglais!" 

He had seen the Boche, had little Gaston, and told 
me how one day the Uhlans had cleaned the estaminet 
out of everything, — wine, cognac, bread, blankets, 
sheets — les sales Boches! 

As the days dragged muddily through it was borne 
in on me that this wasn't fighting for King and 
Country. It was just Tidworth over again with 
none of its advantages and with all its discomforts 
increased a thousandfold. Furthermore the post- 
office seemed to have lost me utterly and weeks 
went by before I had any letters at all. It was 



68 GUN FODDER 

heartbreaking to see the mail distributed daily and 
go away empty-handed. It was as though no one 
cared, as though one were completely forgotten, 
as though in stepping into this new life one had 
renounced one's identity. Indeed every day it be- 
came more evident that it was not I who was in that 
mud patch. It was some one else on whom the real 
me looked down in infinite amazement. I heard 
myself laugh in the farm at night and join in chor- 
uses; saw myself dirty and unbathed, with a scarf 
around my stomach and another round my feet 
and a woollen helmet over my head; standing in 
the mud stripped to the waist, shaving without a 
looking-glass ; drinking coffee and cognac in that 
estaminet. — Was it I who sometimes prayed for 
sleep that I might shut it all out and slip into the 
land of dreams where there is no war and no mud ? 
Was it I who when the first letters arrived from 
home went out into the rainy night with a candle- 
end to be alone with those I loved ? And was it 
only the rain which made it so difficult to read them ? 

18. 

The culminating point was reached when I be- 
came ill. 

Feeling sick, I couldn't eat any breakfast and 
dragged myself on parade like a mangy cat. I 
stuck it till about three in the afternoon, when the 
horse which I was grooming receded from me and 
the whole world rocked. I remember hanging on 
to the horse till things got a bit steadier and then 
asked the sergeant if I might go off parade. I sup- 



THE RANKS 69 

pose I must have looked pretty ill, because he said 
yes at once. 

For three days I lay wrapped up on the straw in 
the barn, eating nothing ; and only crawling out to 
see the doctor each morning at nine o'clock. Of 
other symptoms I will say nothing. The whole 
affair was appalling but I recovered sufficient interest 
in life on the fourth morning to parade sick, although 
I felt vastly more fit. Indeed the argument formed 
itself, "since I am a soldier I'll play the 'old soldier' 
and see how long I can be excused duty." And I 
did it so well that for three more days I was to all 
intents and purposes a free man. On one of the 
days I fell in with a corporal of another squadron 
and he and I got a couple of horses and rode into 
Bailleul, which was only about three miles south of 
us, and we bought chocolates and candles and books 
and exchanged salutes with the Prince of Wales 
who was walking in the town. Then we came back 
with our supplies after an excellent lunch at the hotel 
in the square, the Faucon, and had tea with the 
officers' servants in a cosy little billet with a fire 
and beds. The remarks they made about their 
officers were most instructive and they referred to 
them either as "my bloke" or "'is lordship." 

And there it was I met again a man I had spoken 
to once at Tidworth, who knew French and was now 
squadron interpreter. He was a charming man of 
considerable means, with a large business, who had 
joined up immediately on the outbreak of war. 
But being squadron interpreter he messed with the 
officers, had a billet in a cottage, slept on a bed, 



70 GUN FODDER 

had a private hip bath and hot water and was in 
heaven, comparatively. He suggested to me that 
as my squadron lacked an interpreter (he was 
doing the extra work) and I knew French it was 
up to me. 

"But how the devil's it to be done?" said I, 
alight with the idea. 

"Why don't you go and see the Colonel?" he 
suggested. 

I gasped. The Colonel was nearly God. 

He laughed. "This is 'Kitchener's Army'," he 
said, "not the regular Army. Things are a bit 
different." They were indeed ! 

So I slept on the idea and every moment it seemed 
to me better and better, until the following evening 
after tea, instead of going to the estaminet, I went 
down to squadron headquarters. For about five 
minutes I walked up and down in the mud, pluck- 
ing up courage. I would rather have faced a Hun 
any day. 

At last I went into the farmyard and knocked at 
the door. There were lights in the crack of the 
window shutters. 

A servant answered the door. 

"Is the Colonel in?" said I boldly. 

He peered at me. "What the perishin' 'ell do 
you want to know for ? " 

"I want to see him," said I. 

"And what the 'ell do you want to see him for?" 

I was annoyed. It seemed quite likely that this 
confounded servant would do the St. Peter act and 
refuse me entrance into the gates. 



THE RANKS 71 

"Look here," I said, "it doesn't matter to you 
what for or why. You're here to answer questions. 
Is the Colonel in ? " 

The man snorted. "Oh ! I'm 3 ere to answer ques- 
tions, am I ? Well, if you want to know, the Colonel 
ain't in. — Anything else?" 

I was stumped. It seemed as if my hopes were 
shattered. But luck was mine — as ever. A voice 
came from the inner room. "Thomson! Who is 
that man?" 

The servant made a face at me and went to the 
room door. } 

"A trooper, sir, from one of the squadrons, askin' 
to see the Colonel." 

"Bring him in," said the voice. 

My heart leapt. 

The servant returned to me and showed me into 
the room. 

I saw three officers, one in shirt sleeves, all sitting 
around a fire. Empty tea things were still on a 
table. There were a sofa and armchairs and bright 
pictures, a pile of books and magazines on a table, 
and a smell of Egyptian cigarettes. They all looked 
at me as I saluted. 

"Thomson tells me you want to see the Colonel," 
said the one whose voice I had heard, the one in 
shirt sleeves. " Anything I can do ? " 

It was good to hear one's own language again 
and I decided to make a clean breast of it. 

"It's awfully kind of you, sir," said I. "Perhaps 
you can. I came to ask for the interpretership of 
my squadron. We haven't got one and I can talk 



72 GUN FODDER 

French. If you could put in a word for me I should 
be lastingly grateful." 

His next words made him my brother for life. " Sit 
down, won't you," he said, "and have a cigarette." 

Can you realise what it meant after those weeks 
of misery, with no letters and the eternal adjective 
of the ranks which gets on one's nerves till one could 
scream, to be asked to sit down and have a cigarette 
in that officers' mess ? 

Speechless I took one, although I dislike cigarettes 
and always stick to a pipe. But that one was a 
link with all that I'd left behind and was the best 
I've ever smoked in my life. He proceeded to ask 
me my name and where I was educated and said 
he would see what he could do for me, and after 
about ten minutes I went out again into the mud a 
better soldier than I went in. That touch of fellow 
feeling helped enormously. And he was as good 
as his word. For the following morning the Major 
sent for me. 

19. 

The rain had stopped and there had been a hard 
frost in the night which turned the roads to ice. 
The horses were being walked round and round in a 
circle and the Major was standing watching them 
when I came up and saluted. 

"Yes, what is it?" he said. 

"You sent for me, sir." 

"Oh — you're Gibbs, are you? — Yes, let's go 
in out of this wind." He led the way into the mess 
and stood with his back to the fire. 



THE RANKS 73 

Every detail of that room lives with me yet. One 
went up two steps into the room. The fireplace 
faced the door with a window to the right of the 
fireplace. There was a table between us with news- 
papers on it and tobacco and pipes. And two arm- 
chairs faced the fire. 

He asked me what I wanted the interpretership 
for. I told him I was sick of the ranks, that I had 
chucked a fascinating job to be of use to my King 
and country and that any fool trooper could shovel 
mud as I did day after day. 

He nodded. "But interpreting is no damned 
good, you know," he said. "It only consists in 
looking after the forage and going shopping with 
those officers who can't talk French. — That isn't 
what you want, is it?" 

"No, sir," said I. 

"Well, what other job would you like?" 

That floored me completely. I didn't know what 
jobs there were in the squadron and told him so. 

"Well, come and have dinner to-night and we'll 
talk about it," said he. 

Have dinner ! My clothes reeked of stables and 
I had slept in them ever since I arrived. 

"That doesn't matter," said the Major. "You 
come along to-night at half-past seven. You've 
been sick all this week. How are you? Pretty 
fit again?" 

He's Brigadier General now and has forgotten 
all about it years ago. I don't think I ever shall. 

There were the Major, the Captain and one subal- 
tern at dinner that night — an extraordinary dinner 



74 GUN FODDER 

— the servant who a moment previously had called 
me "chum" in the kitchen gradually getting used 
to waiting on me at the meal, and I, in the same 
dress as the servant, gradually feeling less like a fish 
out of water as the officers treated me as one of them- 
selves. It was the first time I'd eaten at a table 
covered with a white table-cloth for over two months, 
the first time I had used a plate or drunk out of a 
glass, the first time I had been with my own kind. — 
It was very good. 

The outcome of the dinner was that I was to 
become squadron scout, have two horses, keep them 
at the cottage of the interpreter where I was to live, 
and ride over the country gathering information 
which I was to bring as a written report every night 
at six o'clock. While the squadron was behind the 
lines it was of course only a matter of training myself 
before other men were given me to train. But when 
we went into action, — vistas opened out before me 
of dodging Uhlan patrols and galloping back with 
information through a rain of bullets. It was a 
job worth while and I was speechless with gratitude. 

It was not later than seven o'clock the following 
morning, Christmas Eve, 1914, that I began opera- 
tions. I breakfasted at the cottage to which I had 
removed my belongings overnight, and went along 
towards the stables to get a horse. 

The man with whom I had been mucking in met 
me outside the farm. He was in the know and 
grinned cheerily. 

"The sergeant's lookin' for you," he said. "He's 
over in the stables." 



THE RANKS 75 

I went across. He was prowling about near the 
forage. 

"Good morning, Sergeant," said I. 

He looked at me and stopped prowling. "Where 
the — " and he asked me in trooperese where I had 
been and why I wasn't at early morning stables. 
I told him I was on a special job for the Major. 

He gasped and requested an explanation. 

"I'm knocked off all rolls and parades and 
fatigues," I said. "You've got to find me a second 
horse. They are both going to be kept down the 
road and I shall come and see you from time to time 
when I require forage." 

He was speechless for the first and only time. 
It passed his comprehension. 

At that moment the sergeant major came in and 
proceeded to tell him almost word for word what 
I had told him. It was a great morning, a poetic 
revenge, and eventually I rode away leading the other 
horse, the sergeant's pop eyes following me as I 
gave him final instructions as to where to send the 
forage. 

Later, as I started out on my first expedition as 
squadron scout, he waved an arm at me and came 
running. His whole manner had changed and he 
said in a voice of honey, "If you should 'appen to 
pass through Ballool would you mind gettin' me a 
new pipe ? — 'Ere's five francs." 

I got him a pipe and in Bailleul sought out every 
likely looking English signaller or French officer 
and dropped questions, and eventually at 6 p.m., 
having been the round of Dramoutre, Westoutre, 



76 GUN FODDER 

and Locre, took in a rather meagre first report to 
the Major. How I regretted that I had never been 
a newspaper reporter ! However, it was a beginning. 

The following morning was Christmas Day, cold 
and foggy, and before starting out I went about a 
mile down the road to another farm and heard Mass 
in a barn. An odd little service for Christmas 
morning. The altar was made of a couple of biscuit 
boxes in an open barn. The priest wore his vest- 
ments and his boots and spurs showed underneath. 
About half a dozen troopers with rifles were all the 
congregation and we kneeled on the damp ground. 

The first Christmas at Bethlehem came to mind 
most forcibly. The setting was the same. An icy 
wind blew the wisps of straw and the lowing of a 
cow could be heard in the byre. Where the Magi 
brought frankincense and myrrh we brought our 
hopes and ambitions and laid them at the Child's 
feet, asking Him to take care of them for us while 
we went out to meet the great adventure. What 
a contrast to the previous Christmas in the gold 
and sunshine of Miami, Florida, splashed with the 
scarlet flowers of the bougainvillea, and at night the 
soft feathery palms leaning at a curious angle in 
the hard moonlight as though a tornado had once 
swept over the land. 

The farm people sold me a bowl of coffee and a 
slice of bread and I mounted and rode away into the 
fog with an apple and a piece of chocolate in my 
pocket, the horse slipping and sliding on the icy 
road. Not a sound broke the dead silence except 
the blowing of my horse and his hoofs on the road. 



THE RANKS 77 

Every gun was silent during the whole day as though 
the Child had really brought peace and good will. 

I got to within a couple of miles of Ypres by the 
map and saw nothing save a few peasants who 
emerged out of the blanket of fog on their way to 
Mass. A magpie or two flashed across my way and 
there was only an occasional infantryman muffled 
to the eyes when I passed through the scattered 
villages. 

About midday I nibbled some chocolate and 
watered my horse and gave him a feed, feeling more 
and more miserable because there was no means of 
getting any information. My imagination drew 
pictures of the Major, on my return with a blank 
confession of failure, telling me that I was no good 
and had better return to duty. As the short after- 
noon drew in my spirits sank lower and lower. 
They were below zero when at last I knocked reluc- 
tantly at the door of the mess and stood to atten- 
tion inside. To make things worse all the officers 
were there. 

"Well, Gibbs?" said the Major. 

"It isn't well, sir," said I. "I'm afraid I'm no 
damn good. I haven't got a thing to report," and 
I told him of my ride. 

There was silence for a moment. The Major 
flicked off the ash of his cigarette. "My dear fel- 
low," he said quietly, "you can't expect to get the 
hang of the job in five minutes. Don't be impatient 
with it. Give it a chance." 

It was like a reprieve to a man awaiting the hang- 
man. 



78 GUN FODDER 

20. 

The squadron, having been on duty that day, had 
not celebrated Christmas, but the estaminet was a 
mass of holly and mistletoe in preparation for to- 
morrow, and talk ran high on the question of the 
dinner and concert that were to take place. There 
were no letters for me but in spite of it I felt most 
unaccountably and absurdly happy as I left the 
estaminet and went back to my billet and got to 
bed. 

The interpreter came in presently. He had been 
dining well and Christmas exuded from him as he 
smoked a cigar on the side of his bed. 

"Oh, by the way," he said, "your commission has 
come through. They were talking about it in mess 
to-night. Congratulations." 

Commission ! My heart jumped back to the 
Marlborough Hotel. 

"I expect you'll be going home to-morrow," he 
went on; "lucky devil." 

Home ! Could it be ? Was it possible that I 
was going to escape from all this mud and filth? 
Home. What a Christmas present ! No more 
waiting for letters that never came. No more of 
the utter loneliness and indifference that seemed to 
fill one's days and nights. 

The dingy farm room and the rough army blanket 
faded and in their place came a woman's face in a 
setting of tall red pines and gleaming patches of 
moss and high bracken and a green lawn running 
up to a little house of gables, with chintz-curtained 



THE RANKS 79 

windows, warm tiles and red chimneys, and a shining 
river twisting in stately loops. And instead of the 
guns which were thundering the more fiercely after 
their lull, there came the mewing of sandpipers, 
and the gurgle of children's laughter, and the voice 
of that one woman who had given me the vision. — 

21. 

The journey home was a foretaste of the return 
to civilisation, of stepping not only out of one's 
trooper's khaki but of resuming one's identity, of 
counting in the scheme of things. In the ranks one 
was a number, like a convict, — a cipher indeed, 
and as such it was a struggle to keep one's soul alive. 
One had given one's body. They wanted one's 
soul as well. By "they", I mean the system, that 
extraordinary self-contained world which is the 
Army, where the private is marched to church 
whether he have a religion or not, where he is forced 
to think as the sergeant thinks, and so on, right up 
to the General commanding. How few officers 
realise that it is in their power to make the lives of 
their juniors and men a hell or a heaven. 

It was a merciful thing for me that I was able to 
escape so soon, to climb out of that mental and physi- 
cal morass and get back to myself. 

From the squadron I went by motor lorry to Haze- 
brouck and thence in a first-class carriage to Bou- 
logne, and although the carriage was crowded I 
thought of the horse truck in which I'd come up 
from Rouen and chuckled. At Boulogne I was 
able to help the Major, who was going on leave. 



80 GUN FODDER 

He had left a shirt case in the French luggage office 
weeks before and by tackling the porter in his own 
tongue I succeeded in digging it out in five minutes. 
It was the only thing I've ever been able to do to 
express the least gratitude, — and how ridiculously 
inadequate. 

We spent the night in a hotel and caught the 
early boat, horribly early. But it was worth it. 
We reached London about two in the afternoon, a 
rainy, foggy, depressing afternoon, but if it had 
snowed ink I shouldn't have minded. I was above 
mere weather, sailing in the blue ether of radiant 
happiness. In this case the realisation came up 
to and even exceeded the expectation. Miserable- 
looking policemen in black waterproof capes were 
things of beauty. The noise of the traffic was 
sweetest music. The sight of dreary streets with 
soaked pedestrians made one's eyes brim with joy. 
The swish of the taxi round abrupt corners made 
me burst with song. I was glad of the rain and the 
sort of half-fog. It was so typically London, and 
when the taxi driver stopped at my brother's house 
and said to me as I got out, "Just back from the 
front, chum?" I laughed madly and scandalously 
overtipped him. No one else would ever call me 
chum. That was done with. I was no longer 
7205 Trooper A. H. Gibbs, 9th Lancers. I was 
Second Lieutenant A. Hamilton Gibbs, R.F.A., and 
could feel the stars sprouting. 

My brother wasn't at home. He was looking 
like an admiral still and working like the devil. 
But his wife was and she most wisely lent me dis- 



THE RANKS 81 

tant finger tips and hurried me to a bath, what time 
she telephoned to my brother. 

That bath ! I hadn't had all my clothes off more 
than once in six weeks and had slept in them every 
night. Ever tried it? Well, if you really want to 
know just how I felt about that first bath, you try it. 

I stayed in it so long that my sister-in-law became 
anxious and tapped at the door to know if I were 
all right. All right ! Before I was properly dressed 
— but running about the house most shamelessly 
for all that — my brother arrived. 

It was good to see him again, — very good. We 
"foregathered", — what? 

And the next morning, scandalously early, the 
breakfast things still on the table, found me face 
to face once more with the woman who had brought 
me back to life. All that nightmare was immedi- 
ately washed away for ever. It was past. The 
future was too vague for imaginings but the present 
was the most golden thing I had ever known. 







PART II 
UBIQUE 



n. UBIQUE 
1. 

The Division of Field Artillery to which I was 
posted by the War Office was training at Bulford 
up to its neck in mud, but the brigade had moved 
to Fleet two days before I joined. By that time — 
it was a good fifteen days since I had come home — 
I had grown accustomed to the feel and splendour 
of a Sam Browne belt and field boots and the re- 
curring joy of being saluted not merely by Tommies 
but by exalted beings like sergeants and sergeant 
majors ; and I felt mentally as well as physically clean. 

At the same time I arrived at the Fleet Golf Club, 
where most of the officers were billeted, feeling vastly 
diffident. I'd never seen a gun, never given a com- 
mand in my life and hadn't the first or foggiest idea 
of the sort of things gunners did, and my only ex- 
perience of an officers' mess was my dinner with the 
Major in France. Vaguely I knew that there was 
a certain etiquette demanded. It was rather like 
a boy going to a new school. 

It was tea time and dark when the cab dropped 
me at the door and the place was practically empty. 
However, an officer emerged, asked me if I'd come to 
join, and led me in to tea. Presently, however, a 
crowd swarmed in, flung wet mackintoshes and caps 



86 GUN FODDER 

about the hall and began devouring bread and jam 
in a way that more and more resembled school. 
They looked me over with the unintentional in- 
solence of all Englishmen and one or two spoke. 
They were a likely-looking lot, mostly amazingly 
young and full of a vitality that was like an electric 
current. One, a fair willowy lad with one or two 
golden fluffs that presumably did duty as a mous- 
tache, took me in hand. He was somewhat fanci- 
fully called Pot-face but he had undoubtedly bought 
the earth and all things in it. Having asked and 
received my name he informed me that I was posted 
to his battery and introduced me to the other subal- 
tern, also of his battery. This was a pale, blue- 
eyed, head-on-one-side, sensitive youth who was 
always just a moment too late with his repartee. 
Pot-face, who possessed a nimble, sarcastic tongue, 
took an infinite delight in baiting him to the verge 
of tears. His nickname, to which incidentally he 
refused to answer, was the Fluttering Palm. 

The others did not assume individualities till 
later. It was an amusing tea and afterwards we 
adjourned to the big club room with two fireplaces 
and straw armchairs and golfing pictures. The 
senior officers were there and before I could breathe 
Pot-face had introduced me to the Colonel, the 
Adjutant, and the Captain commanding our battery, 
a long, thin, dark man with India stamped all over 
him and a sudden infectious laugh that crinkled all 
his face. He turned out to be the owner of a vitriolic 
tongue. 

A lecture followed, one of a series which took 



UBIQUE 87 

place two or three evenings a week attended by all 
the officers in the brigade, a good two thirds of whom 
were billeted in the village and round about. Of 
technical benefit I don't think I derived any, be- 
cause I knew no gunnery, but it helped me to get 
to know everybody. A further help in that respect 
was afforded by my Captain, who on that first eve- 
ning proposed getting up a concert. Having had two 
years on the stage in America I volunteered to help 
and was at once made O. C. Concert. This gave me 
a sort of standing, took away the awful newness and 
entirely filled my spare time for two weeks. The 
concert was a big success and from that night I felt 
at home. 

To me, after my experience in the ranks, every- 
thing was new and delightful. We were all learning, 
subalterns as well as men. Only the Colonel and 
the Battery Commanders were regulars and every 
single officer and man was keen. The work therefore 
went with a will that surprised me. The men were 
a different class altogether to those with whom I 
had been associated. There were miners, skilled 
men, clerks, people of some education and distinct 
intelligence. Then too the officers came into much 
closer contact with them than in the Cavalry. Our 
training had been done solely under the sergeant 
major. Here in the Gunners the officers not only 
took every parade and lecture and stable hour and 
knew every man and horse by name, but played in 
all the inter-battery football matches. It was a 
different world, much more intimate and much better 
organised. We worked hard and played hard. 



88 GUN FODDER 

Riding was of course most popular because each of 
us had a horse. But several had motor-bicycles 
and went for joy-rides half over the south of Eng- 
land between tattoo and reveille. Then the Golf 
Club made us honorary members, and the Colonel 
and I had many a match, and he almost invariably 
beat me by one hole. 

My ignorance of gunnery was monumental and 
it was a long time before I grasped even the first 
principles. The driving drill part of it didn't worry 
me. The Cavalry had taught me to feel at home 
in the saddle and the drawing of intricate patterns 
on the open country with a battery of four guns was 
a delightful game soon learnt. But once they were 
in action I was lost. It annoyed me to listen help- 
lessly while children of nineteen with squeaky voices 
fired imaginary salvos on imaginary targets and got 
those gunners jumping. So I besought the Colonel 
to send me on a course to Shoebury and he did. 

Work? I'd never known what it meant till I 
went to Shoebury and put on a canvas duck suit. 
We paraded at ungodly hours in the morning, wet 
or fine, took guns to bits and with the instructor's 
help put them together again ; did gun drill by the 
hour and learnt it by heart from the handbook and 
shouted it at each other from a distance; spent 
hours in the country doing map-reading and re- 
section ; sat through hours of gunnery lectures 
where the mysteries of a magic triangle called T.O.B. 
became more and more unfathomable ; knocked out 
countless churches on a miniature range with a pre- 
cision that was quite Boche-like ; waded through a 



UBIQUE 89 

ghastly tabloid book called F.A.T. and flung the 
thing in despair at the wall half a dozen times a 
day; played billiards at night when one had been 
clever enough to arrive first at the table by means of 
infinite manoeuvring; ate like a Trojan, got dog- 
tired by 9 p.m., slept like a child; dashed up to 
London every week-end and went to the theatre, 
and became in fact the complete Shoeburyite. 

Finally I returned to the brigade extraordinarily 
fit, very keen and with perhaps the first glimmerings 
of what a gun was. A scourge of a mysterious skin 
disease ran through the horses at that time. It 
looked like ringworm and wasn't, — according to 
the Vet. But we subalterns vied with each other 
in curing our sections and worked day and night on 
those unfortunate animals with tobacco juice, sulphur 
and every unpleasant means available until they 
looked the most wretched brutes in the world. 

Little by little the training built itself up. From 
standing gun drill we crept to battery gun drill and 
then took the battery out for the day and lost it 
round Aldershot in that glorious pine country, 
coming into action over and over again. 

The Colonel watched it all from a distance with a 
knowledgeable eye and at last took a hand. Brigade 
shows then took place, batteries working in con- 
junction with each other and covering zones. 

Those were good days in the early spring with all 
the birds in full chorus, clouds scudding across a 
blue sky, and the young green feathering all the trees, 
days of hard physical work with one's blood running 
free and the companionship of one's own kind; in- 



90 GUN FODDER 

spired by a friendly rivalry in doing a thing just a 
little bit better than the other fellow — or trying to : 
with an occasional week-end flung in like a sparkling 
jewel. 

And France ? Did we think about it ? Yes, when 
the lights were turned out at night and only the 
point of the final cigarette like a glowworm marked 
the passage of hand to mouth. Then the talk ran 
on brothers "out there" and the chances of our 
going soon. None of them had been except me, but 
I could only give them pictures of star-shell at night 
and the heart-breaking mud, and they wanted gunner 
talk. 

It was extraordinary what a bond grew up be- 
tween us all in those days, shared, I think, by the 
senior officers. We declared ourselves the first 
brigade in the Division, and each battery was of 
course hotly the finest in the brigade; our Colonel 
was miles above any other Colonel in the Army and 
our Battery Commanders the best fellows that ever 
stepped. By God, we'd show Fritz ! — 

We had left Fleet and the golf club and moved 
into hutments at Deepcut about the time I returned 
from the gunnery course. Now the talk centred 
round the firing practice when every man and officer 
would be put to the test and one fine morning the 
order came to proceed to Trawsfynydd, Wales. 

We "proceeded" by train, taking only guns, 
firing battery wagons and teams and after long, long 
hours found ourselves tucked away in a camp in 
the mountains with great blankets of mist rolling 
down and blotting everything out, the ground a 



UBIQUE 91 

squelching bog of tussocks with outcrops of rock 
sprouting up everywhere. A strange, hard, cold 
country, with unhappy houses, grey-tiled and lonely, 
and peasants whose faces seemed marked by the 
desolation of it all. 

The range was a rolling stretch of country falling 
away from a plateau high above us, reached by a 
corkscrew path that tore the horses to pieces, and 
cut up by stone walls and nullahs which after an 
hour's rain foamed with brown water. Through 
glasses we made out the targets — four black dots 
representing a battery, a row of tiny figures for 
infantry, and a series of lines indicating trenches. 
For three days the weather prevented us from shoot- 
ing but at last came a morning when the fog blanket 
rolled back and the guns were run up, and little 
puffs of cotton wool appeared over the targets, the 
hills ringing with countless echoes as though they 
would never tire of the firing. 

Each subaltern was called up in turn and given a 
target by the Colonel who, lying silently on his 
stomach, watched results through his glasses and 
doubtless in his mind summed each of us up from the 
methods of our orders to the battery, the nimble- 
ness and otherwise with which we gauged and cor- 
rected them. A trying ordeal which was, however, 
all too short. Sixteen rounds apiece were all that 
we were allowed. We would have liked six hundred, 
so fascinating and bewildering was the new game. 
It seemed as if the guns took a malignant pleasure 
in disobeying our orders, each gun having its own 
particular devil to compete with. 



92 GUN FODDER 

In the light of to-day the explanation is simple. 
There was no such thing as calibration then, that 
exorciser of the evil spirit in all guns. 

And so, having seen at last a practical demon- 
stration of what I had long considered a fact — 
that the Gunners' Bible F.A.T. (the handbook of 
Field Artillery Training) was a complete waste of 
time, we all went back to Deepcut even more than 
ever convinced that we were the finest brigade in 
England. And all on the strength of sixteen rounds 
apiece ! 

Almost at once I was removed from the scientific 
activities necessitated by being a battery subal- 
tern. An apparently new establishment was made, 
a being called an Orderly Officer, whose job was to 
keep the Colonel in order and remind the Adjutant 
of all the things he forgot. In addition to those 
two matters of supreme moment there were one or 
two minor duties like training the brigade signallers 
to lay out cables and buzz messages, listen to the 
domestic troubles of the regimental sergeant major, 
whose importance is second only to that of the 
Colonel, look after some thirty men and horses and 
a cable wagon and endeavour to keep in the good 
books of the Battery Commanders. 

I got the job — and kept it for over a year. 

Colonel, didn't I keep you in order ? 

Adj, did I ever do any work for you? 

Battery Commanders, didn't I come and cadge 
drinks daily — and incidentally wasn't that cable 
which I laid from Valandovo to Kajali the last in 
use before the Bulgar pushed us off the earth ? 



UBIQUE 93 



2. 



So I forgot the little I ever knew about gunnery 
and laid spiders' webs from my cable wagon all over 
Deepcut, and galloped for the Colonel on Divisional 
training stunts with a bottle of beer and sandwiches 
in each wallet against the hour when the General, 
feeling hungry, should declare an armistice with the 
opposing force and Colonels and their Orderly 
Officers might replenish their inner men. Brave 
days of great lightheartedness, untouched by the 
shadow of what was to come after. 

May had put leaves on all the trees and called 
forth flowers in every garden. Then came June 
to perfect her handiwork and with it the call to lay 
aside our golf clubs and motor-cycles, to say good-by 
to England in all her beauty and go out once more to 
do our bit. 

There was much bustle and packing of kits and 
writing of letters and heartburnings over last week- 
end leaves refused and through it all a thirst for 
knowledge of where we were going. Everything 
was secret, letters severely censored. Rumour 
and counter-rumour chased each other through the 
camp until, an hour before starting, the Captain 
in whose battery I had begun appeared with a motor 
car full of topees. 

Then all faces like true believers were turned 
towards the East and on every tongue was the word 
Gallipoli. 

Avonmouth was the port of embarkation and there 
we filled a mass of waiting boats, big and little. 



94 GUN FODDER 

The Colonel, the Adjutant and I were on one of 
the biggest. My horses had been handed over to a 
battery for the voyage and I had only the signallers 
to look after. Everything was complete by ten 
o'clock in the morning. The convoy would not 
sail till midnight, so some of us got leave to explore 
and took train to Bristol, lunching royally for the 
last time in a restaurant, buying innumerable novels 
to read on board, sending final telegrams home. 

How very different it was to the first going out ! 
No red lead. No mud. The reality had departed. 
It seemed like going on a picnic, a merry outing with 
cheery souls, a hot sun trickling down one's back; 
and not one of us but heard the East a-calling. 

A curious voyage that was when we had sorted 
ourselves out. The mornings were taken up with 
a few duties, — physical jerks, chin inspection and 
Grand Rounds when we stood stiffly to attention, 
rocking with the sway of the boat while the two 
commanders of the sister services inspected the 
ship ; life-boat drill, a little signalling ; and then 
long hours in scorching sunshine, to lie in a deck 
chair gazing out from the saloon deck upon the 
infinite blue, trying to find the answer to the why 
of it all, arguing the alpha and omega with one's 
pals, reading the novels we had bought in Bristol, 
writing home, sleeping. Torpedoes and mines ? We 
never thought about them. 

Boxing competitions and sports were organised 
for the men and they hammered each other's faces 
to pulp with the utmost good fellowship. 

Then we passed The Rock and with our first 



UBIQUE 95 

glimpse of the African coast — a low brown smudge 
— we began to stir restlessly and think of terra 
firma. It broke the spell of dreams which had 
filled the long days. Maps were produced and 
conferences held, and we studied eagerly the con- 
tours of Gallipoli, discussed the detail of landings 
and battery positions, wagon lines and signalling 
arrangements, even going so far as to work off our 
bearing of the line of fire. Fragments of war news 
were received by wireless and a communique was 
posted daily but it all seemed extraordinarily unreal, 
as though it were taking place in another world. 

One night we saw a fairyland of piled-up lights 
which grew swiftly as we drew nearer and took shape 
in filigreed terraces and arcades when our anchor 
at last dropped with a mighty roar in Valetta har- 
bour. Tiny boats like gondolas were moored at 
the water's edge in tight rows, making in the moon- 
light a curious scalloped fringe. People in odd gar- 
ments passed in noiseless swarms up and down the 
streets, cabs went by, shop doors opened and shut, 
and behind all those lights loomed the impenetrable 
blackness of the land towering up like a mountain. 
From the distance at which we were anchored no 
sound could be heard save that of shipping, and those 
ant-sized people going about their affairs, regardless 
of the thousands of eyes watching them, gave one 
the effect of looking at a stage from the gallery 
through the wrong end of an opera glass. 

Coaling began within an hour, and all that night 
bronze figures naked to the waist and with bare 
feet slithered up and down the swaying planks, tire- 



96 GUN FODDER 

less, unceasing, glistening in the arc light which 
spluttered from the mast of the coaling vessel; 
the grit of coal dust made one's shoes crunch as one 
walked the decks in pyjamas, filled one's hair and 
neck, and on that stifling night became as one of the 
plagues of Pharaoh. 

A strange discordant chattering waked one next 
morning as though a tribe of monkeys had besieged 
the ship. Then one leaped to the porthole to get a 
glimpse of Malta, to us the first hint of the mysterious 
East. There it was, glistening white against the 
turquoise blue, built up in fascinating tiers with 
splashes of dark green trees clinging here and there 
as though afraid of losing their hold and toppling 
into the sea. All round the ship the sea was dotted 
with boats and dark people yelling and shouting, 
all reds and blues and bright yellows ; piles of golden 
fruit and coloured shawls; big boats with -high 
snub noses, the oarsmen standing, showing rows of 
gleaming teeth ; baby boats the size of walnut shells 
with naked brown babies uttering shrill cries and 
diving like frogs for silver coins. 

Was it possible that just a little farther on we 
should meet one end of the line of death that made 
a red gash right across Europe ? 

We laughed a little self-consciously under the un- 
usual feel of our topees and went ashore to try and 
get some drill khaki. Finding none we drank cool 
drinks and bought cigars and smiled at the milk 
sellers with their flocks of goats and the cafS au lait 
coloured girls, some of whom moved with extraor- 
dinary grace and looked very pretty under their 



UBIQUE 97 

black mantillas. The banks distrusted us and would 
give us no money and the Base cashier refused to 
undo his purse strings. We cursed him and tried 
unsuccessfully to borrow from each other, having 
only a few pounds in our pockets. Down a back 
street we found a Japanese tattooist and in spite 
of the others' ridicule I added a highly coloured but 
pensive parrot to my collection. But the heat was 
overwhelming and our puttees and tunics became 
streaked with sweat. We were glad to get back 
to the boat and lie in a cold bath and climb languidly 
into the comparative coolness of slacks. The men 
had not been allowed ashore but hundreds of them 
dived overboard and swam round the boat, and the 
native fruit sellers did a thriving trade. 

After dinner we went ashore again. It was not 
much cooler. We wandered into various places 
of amusement. They were all the same, large dirty 
halls with a small stage and a piano and hundreds 
of marble-topped tables where one sat and drank. 
Atrociously fat women appeared on the stage and 
sang four songs apiece in bad French. It didn't 
matter whether the first song was greeted with stony 
silence or the damning praise of one sarcastic laugh. 
Back came each one until she'd finished her reper- 
toire. Getting bored with that I collected a fellow 
sufferer and together we went out and made our 
way to the top of the ramparts. The sky looked as 
if a giant had spilt all the diamonds in the world. 
They glittered and changed colour. The sea was 
also powdered as if little bits of diamond dust had 
dropped from the sky. The air smelled sweet and 



98 GUN FODDER 

a little strange and in that velvety darkness which 
one could L almost touch one's imagination went 
rioting. 

As if that were not enough a guitar somewhere 
down below was suddenly touched with magic 
fingers and a little love song floated up in a soft 
lilting tenor. — We were very silent on the old wall. 



The next morning on waking up, that song still 
echoing in our ears, we were hull down. Only a 
vague disturbance in the blue showed where Malta 
had been, and but for the tattoo which irritated 
slightly, it might have been one of the Thousand 
and One Nights. We arrived at last at Alexandria 
instead of Gallipoli. The shore authorities lived 
up to the best standards of the Staff. 

They said, "Who the devil are you?" 

And we replied, "The — Division." 

And they said, "We've never heard of you, don't 
know where you come from, have no instructions 
about you, and you'd better buzz off again." 

But we beamed at them and said, "To hell with 
you. We're going to land," — and landed. 

There were no arrangements for horses or men ; 
arid M.L.O.'s in all the glory of staff hats and armlets 
chattered like impotent monkeys. We were busy, 
however, improvising picketing-ropes from ships' 
cables borrowed from the amused ships' commander 
and we smiled politely and said, "Yes, it is hot," 
and went on with the work. Never heard of the 
— Division ? Well, well ! 



UBIQUE 99 

Hot ? We had never known what heat was be- 
fore. We thought we did lying about on deck, but 
when it came to working for hours on end, — tunics 
disappeared and collars and ties followed them. 
The horses looked as if they had been out in the rain 
and left a watery trail as we formed up and marched 
out of the harbour and through the town. We 
bivouacked for the night in a rest camp called 
Karaissi where there wasn't enough room and 
tempers ran high until a couple of horses broke 
loose in the dark and charged the tent in which there 
were two Colonels. The tent ropes went with a 
ping and camp beds and clothing and Colonels were 
mixed up in the sand. No one was hurt, so we 
emptied the Colonels' pyjamas, called their ser- 
vants and went away and laughed. 

Then we hooked in and marched again, and in 
the middle of the afternoon found Mamoura — a 
village of odd smells, naked children, filthy women 
and pariah dogs — and pitched camp on the choking 
sand half a mile from the seashore. 

By this time the horses were nearly dead and the 
only water was a mile and a half away and full of 
sand. But they drank it, poor brutes, by the gallon, 
— and two days after we had our first case of sand 
colic. 

The Staff were in marquees on the seashore. 
Presumably being bored, having nothing earthly to 
do, they began to exhibit a taste for design, and each 
day the camp was moved, twenty yards this way, 
fifteen that, twelve and a half the other, until, thank 
God, the sun became too much for them and they 



100 GUN FODDER 

retired to suck cool drinks through straws and think 
up a new game. 

By this time the Colonel had refused to play and 
removed himself, lock, stock, and barrel, to the hotel 
in the village. The Adjutant was praying aloud 
for the mud of Flanders. The Orderly Officer made 
himself scarce and the Battery Commanders were 
telling Indian snake stories at breakfast. The 
sergeants and the men, half naked and with tongues 
hanging out, were searching for beer. 

The days passed relentlessly, scorching hot, the 
only work, watering the horses four times a day, 
leaving everybody weak and exhausted. At night 
a damp breeze sighed across the sand from the sea, 
soaking everything as though it had rained. The 
busiest men in the camp were the Vet. and the 
doctor. 

Sand colic ran through the Division like a scourge, 
and dysentery began to reduce the personnel from 
day to day. The flies bred in their billions, in spite 
of all the doctor's efforts, loyally backed up by us. 
The subalterns' method of checking flies was to 
catch salamanders and walk about, holding them 
within range of guy ropes and tent roofs where 
flies swarmed, and watch their coiled tongues un- 
curl like a flash of lightning and then trace the 
passage of the disgruntled fly down into the sala- 
mander's interior. Battery Commanders waking 
from a fly-pestered siesta would lay their piastres 
eagerly on "Archibald" versus "Yussuf." Even 
Wendy would have admitted that it was "frightfully 
fascinating." 



UBIQUE 101 

Every morning there was a pyjama parade at 
six o'clock when we all trooped across to the sea 
and went in as nature made us. Or else we rode 
the horses with snorts and splashings. The old 
hairy enjoyed it as much as we did and, once in, it 
was difficult to get him out again, even with bare 
heels drumming on his ribs. 

The infantry, instead of landing at Alexandria, had 
gone straight to the Dardanelles, and after we had 
been in camp about a fortnight the two senior 
brigades of Gunners packed up and disappeared in 
the night, leaving us grinding our teeth with envy 
and hoping that they wouldn't have licked the Turk 
until we got there too. 

Five full months and a half we stayed in that camp ! 
One went through two distinct phases. 

The first was good, when everything was new, 
different, romantic, delightful, from the main streets 
of Alexandria with European shops and Oriental 
people, the club with its white-burnoused waiters 
with red sash and red fez, down to the unutterable 
filth and foul smells of the back streets where every 
disease lurked in the doorways. There were early 
morning rides to sleepy villages across the desert, 
pigeons fluttering round the delicate minarets, one's 
horse making scarcely any sound in the deep sand 
until startled into a snort by a scuttling salamander 
or iguana as long as one's arm. Now and then one 
watched breathless a string of camels on a distant 
skyline disappearing into the vast silence. Then 
those dawns, with opal colours like a rainbow that 
had broken open and splashed itself across the 



102 GUN FODDER 

world ! What infinite joy in all that riot of colour. 
The sunsets were too rapid : one great splurge of 
blood and then darkness, followed by a moonlight 
that was as hard as steel mirrors. Buildings and 
trees were picked out in ghostly white but the 
shadows by contrast were darker than the pit, made 
gruesome by the howling of pariah dogs which flitted 
silently like damned souls. 

The eternal mystery of the yashmak caught us 
all, — two deep eyes behind that little veil, the 
lilting, sensuous walk, the perfect balance and rhythm 
of those women who worshipped other gods. 

Then there was the joy of mail day. Letters and 
papers arrived regularly, thirteen days old but more 
precious because of it. How one sprang to the mess- 
table in the big marquee, open to whatever winds 
that blew, when the letters were dumped on it, and 
danced with impatience while they were being sorted, 
and retired in triumph to one's reed hut like a dog 
with a bone to revel in all the little happenings at 
home that interested us so vitally, to marvel at the 
amazingly different points of view and to thank God 
that, although thousands of miles away, one "be- 
longed." 

Then came the time when we had explored every- 
thing, knew it all backwards, and the colours didn't 
seem so bright. The sun seemed hotter, the flies 
thicker and the days longer. Restlessness attacked 
everybody and the question, "What the devil are 
we doing here?" began to be asked, only to draw 
bitter answers. Humour began to have a tinge of sar- 
casm, remarks tended to become personal, and people 



UBIQUE 103 

disappeared precipitately after mess instead of play- 
ing the usual rubbers. The unfortunate subaltern 
who was the butt of the mess — a really excellent 
and clever fellow — relapsed into a morose silence, 
and every one who had the least tendency to dys- 
entery went gladly to hospital. Even the brigade 
laughter-maker lost his touch. It had its echo in 
the ranks. Sergeants made more frequent arrests, 
courts-martial cropped up and it was more difficult 
to get the work done in spite of concerts, sports and 
boxing contests. Interest flagged utterly. Merci- 
fully the Staff held aloof. 

The courts-martial seemed to me most Hogarthian 
versions of justice, satirical and damnable. One in 
particular was held on a poor little rat of an infantry- 
man who had missed the boat for Gallipoli and was 
being tried for desertion. The reason of his missing 
the boat was that she sailed before her time and he, 
having had a glass or two — and why not ? — found 
that she had already gone when he arrived back in 
the harbour five minutes before the official time for 
her departure. He immediately reported to the 
police. 

I am convinced that she was the only boat who 
ever sailed before her time during the course of the 



war 



However, I was under instruction — and learnt a 
great deal. The heat was appalling. The poor 
little prisoner, frightened out of his life, utterly lost 
his head, and the Court, after hours of formal 
scribbling on blue paper, brought him in guilty. 
Having obtained permission to ask a question I 



104 GUN FODDER 

requested to know whether the Court was convinced 
that he had the intention of deserting. 

The Court was quite satisfied on that point and, 
besides, there had been so many cases of desertion 
lately from the drafts for Gallipoli that really it was 
time an example was made of some one. He got 
three years ! 

Supposing I'd hit that bullying sergeant in the 
eye in Flanders ? 

4. 

Two incidents occurred during that lugubrious 
period that helped to break the dead monotony. 

The first was the sight of a real live eunuch, ac- 
cording to all the specifications of the Arabian 
Nights. We were to give a horse show and as the 
flag of residence was flying from the Sultan's palace 
I asked the Colonel if I might invite the Sultan. 
The Colonel was quite in favour of it. So with an 
extra polish on my buttons and saddlery I collected 
a pal and together we rode through the great gate- 
way into the grounds of the palace, ablaze with 
tropical vegetation and blood-red flowers. Camped 
among the trees on the right of the drive was a native 
guard of about thirty men. They rose as one man, 
jabbered at the sight of us but remained stationary. 
We rode on at a walk with all the dignity of the 
British Empire behind us. Then we saw a big 
Arab come running towards us from the palace, 
uttering shrill cries and waving his arms. We met 
him and would have passed but he made as though 
to lay hands upon our bits. So we halted and lis- 
tened to a stream of Arabic and gesticulation. 



UBIQUE 105 

Then the eunuch appeared, a little man of immense 
shoulders and immense stomach, dressed in a black 
frock coat and stiff white collar, yellow leather 
slippers and red fez and sash. He was about five 
feet tall and addressed us in a high squeaky voice 
like a fiddle string out of tune. His dignity was 
surprising and he would have done justice to the 
Court of Haroun al Raschid. We were delighted 
with him and called him Morgiana. 

He didn't understand that so I tried him in French, 
whereupon he clapped his hands twice, and from an 
engine room among the outbuildings came running 
an Arab mechanic in blue jeans. He spoke a sort 
of hybrid Levantine French and conveyed our in- 
vitation of the Sultan to the eunuch, who bowed and 
spoke again. The desire to laugh was appalling. 

It appeared that the Sultan was absent in Alex- 
andria and only the Sultana and the ladies were 
here and it was quite forbidden that we should ap- 
proach nearer the palace. 

Reluctantly, therefore, we saluted, which drew 
many salaams and bowings in reply, and rode 
away, followed by that unforgetable little man's 
squeaks. 

The other incident covered a period of a week or 
so. It was a question of spies. 

The village of Mamoura consisted of a railway 
terminus and hotel round which sprawled a dark 
and smelly conglomeration of hovels out of which 
sprouted the inevitable minaret. The hotel was 
run by people who purported to be French but who 
were of doubtful origin, ranging from half-caste 



106 GUN FODDER 

Arab to Turk by way of Greek and Armenian Jew. 
But they provided dinner and cooling drinks and 
it was pleasant to sit under the awninged verandah 
and listen to the frogs and the sea or to play their 
ramshackle piano and dance with the French resi- 
dents of Alexandria who came out for week-ends to 
bathe. 

At night we used to mount donkeys about as 
big as large beetles and have races across the sands 
back to camp, from which one could see the lights 
of the hotel. Indeed we thought we saw what they 
didn't intend us to, for there were unmistakable 
Morse flashings out to sea from that cool verandah. 
We took it with grim seriousness and lay for hours 
on our stomachs with field glasses glued to our eyes. 
I posted my signalling corporal in a drinking house 
next door to the hotel, gave him late leave and paid 
his beer so that he might watch with pencil and 
notebook. But always he reported in the morning 
that he'd seen nothing. 

The climax came when one night an orderly burst 
into the hut which the Vet. and I shared and said, 

" Mr. wants you to come over at once, sir. He's 

taken down half a message from the signalling at 
the hotel." 

I leapt into gum boots, snatched my glasses and 
ran across to the sand mound from where we had 
watched. 

The other subaltern was there in a great state of 
excitement. 

"Look at it," he said. "Morsing like mad." 

I looked, — and looked again. 



UBIQUE 107 

There was a good breeze blowing and the flag on 
the verandah was exactly like the shutter of a 
signalling lamp ! 

5. 

Having sat there all those months, the order to 
move, when it did finally come, was of the most 
urgent nature. It was received one afternoon at 
tea time and the next morning before dawn we 
were marching down the canal road. 

Just before the end we had done a little training, 
more to get the horses in draught than anything 
else. With that and the horse shows it wasn't at 
all a bad turnout. 

Once more we didn't know for certain where we 
were bound for but the betting was about five to 
four on Greece. How these things leak out is al- 
ways a puzzle but leak out they do. Sure enough 
we made another little sea voyage and in about 
three days steamed up the Mge&n, passing many 
boats loaded with odd-looking soldiers in khaki who 
turned out to be Greek, and at last anchored out- 
side Salonica in a mass of shipping, French and 
English troopships, destroyers and torpedo boats 
and an American battleship with Eiffel-tower masts. 

From the sea Salonica was a flashing jewel in a 
perfect setting. Minarets and mosques, white and 
red, sprouted everywhere from the white, brown 
and green buildings. Trees and gardens nestled 
within the crumbling old city wall. Behind it ran 
a line of jagged peaks, merging with the clouds, 
and here and there ran a little winding ribbon of 



108 GUN FODDER 

road, climbing up and up only to lose itself suddenly 
by falling over a precipice. 

Here again the M.L.O. had not quite the Public 
School and Varsity manner and we suffered accord- 
ingly. However, they are a necessary evil pre- 
sumably, these quay-side warriors. The proof un- 
doubtedly lies in the number of D.S.O.'s they 
muster, — but I don't remember to have seen any 
of them with wound stripes. Curious, that. 

We marched through mean streets, that smelled 
worse than Egypt, and a dirty populace, poverty- 
stricken and covered with sores ; the soldiers in 
khaki that looked like brown paper, and leather 
equipments that were a good imitation of card- 
board. Most of the officers wore spurs like the 
Three Musketeers and their little tin swords looked 
as if they had come out of toy shops. None of them 
were shaved. If first impressions count for anything 
then God help the Greeks. 

Our camp was a large open field some miles to 
the northwest of the town, on the lower slopes of a 
jagged peak. The tinkle of cow bells made soft 
music everywhere. Of accommodation there was 
none of any sort, no tents, nothing but what we 
could improvise. The Colonel slept under the lee 
of the cook's cart. The Adjutant and the doctor 
shared the Maltese cart, and the Vet. and I crept 
under the forage tarpaulin, from which we were 
awakened in the dark by an unrestrained cursing 
and the noise of a violent rainfall. 

Needless to say everybody was soaked, fires 
wouldn't light, breakfast didn't come, tempers as 



UBIQUE 109 

well as appetites became extremely sharp and things 
were most unpleasant, — the more so since it went 
on raining for three weeks almost without stopping. 
Although we hadn't seen rain for half a year it 
didn't take us five minutes to wish we were back 
in Egypt. Fortunately we drew bell tents within 
forty-eight hours and life became more bearable. 
But once more we had to go through a sort of camp 
drill by numbers, — odd numbers too, for the order 
came round that tents would be moved first, then 
vehicles, and lastly the horses. 

Presumably we had to move the guns and wagons 
with drag-ropes while the horses watched us, grinning 
into their nose bags. 

Anyhow, there we were, half the artillery in 
Greece, all eighteen-pounders, the other half and 
the infantry somewhere in the Dardanelles. It 
appeared, however, that the — Division had quite 
a lot of perfectly good infantry just up the road 
but their artillery hadn't got enough horses to go 
round. So we made a sort of Jack Sprat and his 
wife arrangement and declared ourselves mobile. 

About four days after we'd come into camp the 
Marquette was wrecked some thirty miles off Sa- 
lonica. It had the — Divisional Ammunition 
Column on board and some nurses. They had an 
appalling time in the water and many were lost. 
The surviving officers, who came dressed in the most 
motley garments, poor devils, were split up amongst 
the brigade. 

On the Headquarter Staff we took to our bosoms 
a charming fellow who was almost immediately 



110 GUN FODDER 

given the name of Woodbine, — jolly old Woodbine, 
one of the very best, whom we left behind with 
infinite regret while we went up country. I'd like 
to know what his golf handicap is these days. 

The political situation was apparently delicate. 
Greece was still sitting on the fence, waiting to see 
which way the cat would jump, and here were we 
and our allies, the French, marching through their 
neutral country. 

Slight evidences of the " delicacy " of the times 
were afforded by the stabbing of some half dozen 
Tommies in the dark streets of the town and by the 
fact that it was only the goodly array of guns which 
prevented them from interning us. I don't think 
we had any ammunition as yet, so we couldn't 
have done very much. However that may be and 
whatever the political reasons, we sat on the road- 
side day after day, watching the French streaming 
up country, — infantry, field guns, mountain ar- 
tillery and pack transport, — heedless of Tino and 
his protests. Six months in Egypt, and now this ! 
We were annoyed. 

However, on about the twentieth day things 
really happened. "Don" battery went off by train, 
their destination being some unpronounceable village 
near the firing line. We, the Headquarters Staff, 
and "AC" battery followed the next day. The 
railway followed the meanderings of the Vardar 
through fertile land of amazing greenness and passed 
mountains of stark rock where not even live oak 
grew. The weather was warm for November, but 
that ceaseless rain put a damper on everything, 



UBIQUE 111 

and when we finally arrived we found "Don" 
battery sitting gloomily in a swamp on the side of 
the road. We joined them. 

6. 

The weather changed in the night and we were 
greeted with a glorious sunshine in the morning that 
not only dried our clothes but filled us with optimism. 

Just as we were about to start, the pole of my G.S. 
wagon broke. Everybody went on, leaving me in 
the middle of nowhere with a broken wagon, no map, 
and instructions to follow on to the "i" of Causli in 
a country whose language I couldn't speak and with 
no idea of the distance. Fortunately I kept the 
brigade artificer with me and a day's bully beef 
and biscuits, for it was not till two o'clock in the 
afternoon that we at last got that wagon mended, 
having had to cut down a tree and make a new pole 
and drive rivets. Then we set off into the unknown 
through the most glorious countryside imaginable. 
The autumn had stained all the trees red and the 
fallen leaves made a royal carpet. Vaguely I knew 
the direction was north by east and once having 
struck the road out of the village which led in that 
direction I found that it went straight on through 
beds of streams, between fields of maize and plan- 
tations of mulberries and tumbled villages tenanted 
only by starving dogs. The doors of nearly every 
house were splashed with a blue cross, — reminis- 
cences of a plague of typhus. From time to time we 
met refugees trudging behind ox-drawn wagons 
laden with everything they possessed in the world, 



112 GUN FODDER 

including their babies, — sad-faced, wild - looking 
peasants, clad in picturesque rags of all colours 
with eyes that had looked upon fear. I confess to 
having kept my revolver handy. For all I knew 
they might be Turks, Bulgars, or at least brigands. 

The sense of solitude was extraordinary. There 
was no sign of an army on the march, not even a 
bully beef tin to mark the route, nothing but the 
purple hills remaining always far away and sending 
out a faint muttering like the beating of drums heard 
in a dream. The road ahead was always empty 
when I scanned it through my glasses at hour inter- 
vals, the sun lower and lower each time. Darkness 
came upon us as it did in Egypt, as though some one 
had flicked off the switch. There was no sign of 
the village which might be Causli and in the dark 
the thought which had been uneasily twisting in my 
brain for several hours suddenly found utterance in 
the mouth of the artificer sergeant. 

"D'you think we're on the right road, sir ?" 

The only other road we could have taken was at 
the very start. Ought I to have taken it ? In any 
case there was nothing to be done but go on until 
we met some one French or English, but the feeling 
of uncertainty was distinctly unpleasant. I sent 
the corporal on ahead scouting and we followed 
silently, very stiff in the saddle. 

At last I heard a shout, "Brigade 'Eadquarters ? " 
I think both the team drivers and myself answered 
"Yes" together. 

The corporal had found a guide sent out by the 
Adjutant, who turned us off across fields and led us 



UBIQUE 113 

on to another road, and round a bend we saw lights 
twinkling and heard the stamp and movement of 
picketed horses and answered the challenge of 
sentries. Dinner was over, but the cook had kept 
some hot for me, and my servant had rigged up 
my bivvy, a tiny canvas tent just big enough to 
take a camp bed. As there was a touch of frost 
I went to the bivvy to get a woollen scarf, heard a 
scuffle, and saw two green eyes glaring at me. 

I whipped out my revolver and flicked on an 
electric torch. Crouched down on the bed was a 
little tortoise-shell kitten so thin that every rib stood 
out and even more frightened than I was. I caught 
it after a minute. It was ice cold so I tucked it 
against my chest under the British warm and went 
to dinner. After about five minutes it began to 
purr and I fed it with some bits of meat which it 
bolted ravenously. It followed that up by stand- 
ing in a saucer of milk, growling furiously and lapping 
for dear life. Friendship was established. It slept 
in the British warm, purring savagely when I stroked 
it, as though starved of affection as well as food; 
followed close to my heels when I went out in the 
morning but fled wildly back to the bivvy if any 
one came up to me, emerging arched like a little 
caterpillar from under the bed, uttering cries of joy 
when I lifted the bivvy flap. 

It was almost like finding a refugee child who had 
got frightened and lost and trusted only the hand 
that had done it a kindness. 



114 GUN FODDER 



7. 



The "i" of Causli showed itself in the morning 
to be a stretch of turf in a broad green trough be- 
tween two rows of steep hills. Causli was some- 
where tucked behind the crest in our rear and the 
road on which I had travelled ran back a couple of 
miles, doubled in a hairpin twist and curved away 
on the other side of the valley until it lost itself be- 
hind a belt of trees that leaped out of the far hill. 
Forward the view was shut in by the spur which 
sheltered us, but our horses were being saddled and 
after breakfast the Colonel took me with him to 
reconnoitre. Very soon the valley ceased and the 
road became a mountain path with many stone 
bridges taking it over precipitous drops. Looking 
over, one saw little streams bubbling in the sun- 
light. After about three miles of climbing we came 
upon a signal station on the roadside with linesmen 
at work. It was the first sign of any troops in all 
that country, but miles behind us, right back to 
Salonica, the road was a long chain of troops and 
transport. Our brigade was as yet the only one up 
in action. 

The signal station proved to be infantry head- 
quarters. It was the summit of the pass, the moun- 
tains opening like a great V in front through which 
further mountains appeared, with that one endless 
road curling up like a white snake. There was a 
considerable noise of firing going on and we were 
just in time to see the French take a steep crest, — 
an unbelievable sight. We lay on our stomachs 



UBIQUE 115 

miles behind them and through glasses watched 
puffs of cotton wool, black and white, sprout out 
of a far-away hill, followed by a wavering line of 
blue dots. Presently the cotton wool sprouted 
closer to the crest and the blue dots climbed steadily. 
Then the cotton wool disappeared over the top and 
the blue dots gave chase. Now and then one 
stumbled and fell. Breathless one watched to see if 
he would get up again. Generally he didn't, but 
the line didn't stop and presently the last of it had 
disappeared over the crest. The invisible firing 
went on and the only proof that it wasn't a dream 
was the motionless bundles of blue that lay out 
there in the sun. — 

It was the first time I'd seen men killed and it left 
me silent, angry. Why "go out" like that on some 
damned Serbian hill? What was it all about that 
everybody was trying to kill everybody else ? Wasn't 
the sun shining and the world beautiful ? What 
was this disease that had broken out like a scab 
over the face of the world ? — Why did those par- 
ticular dots have to fall ? Why not the ones a yard 
away ? What was the law of selection ? Was there 
a law? Did every bullet have its billet? Was 
there a bullet for the Colonel ? — For me ? — No. 
It was impossible ! But then, why those others and 
which of us ? — 

I think I've found the answer to some of those 
questions now. But on that bright November day, 
1915, I was too young. It was all in the game, al- 
though from that moment there was a shadow on it. 



116 GUN FODDER 

8. 

"Don" battery went into action first. 

The Headquarters moved up close to the signalling 
station — and I lost my kitten — but "Don" went 
down the pass to the very bottom and cross-country 
to the east, and dug themselves in near a deserted 
farmhouse on the outskirts of Valandovo. "Beer" 
and "C" batteries came up a day or two later and 
sat down with "AC." There seemed to be no hurry. 
Our own infantry were not in the line. They were 
in support of the French, and, with supine ignorance 
or amazing pluck, but anyhow a total disregard of 
the laws of warfare, proceeded to dig trenches of 
sorts in full daylight and in full view of the Bulgar. 
We shouldn't have minded so much but our O.P. 
happened to be on the hill where most of these heroes 
came to dig. 

The troops themselves were remarkably ill-chosen. 
Most of those who were not Irish were flat-footed 
"brickees" from Middlesex, Essex and the dead- 
level east coast counties, so their own officers told 
me, where they never raise one ankle above the 
other. Now they were chosen to give imitations of 
chamois in these endless hills. Why not send an 
aviator to command a tank? Furthermore, the 
only guns were French 75 's and our eighteen- 
pounders and, I think, a French brigade of mountain 
artillery, when obviously howitzers were indicated. 
And there were no recuperators in those days. Put 
a quadrant angle of 28° and some minutes on an old 
pattern eighteen-pounder and see how long you stay 



UBIQUE 117 

in action, — with spare springs at a premium and 
the nearest workshops sixty miles away. My own 
belief is that a couple of handfuls of Gurkhas and 
French Tirailleurs would have cleaned up Serbia in 
a couple of months. As it was. — 

The French gave us the right of the line from north- 
west of Valandoyo to somewhere east of Kajali in 
the blue hills, over which, said the Staff, neither man 
nor beast could pass. We needn't worry about our 
right, they said. Nature was doing that for us. 
But apparently Nature had allowed not less than 
eight Greek divisions to march comfortably over 
that impassable right flank of ours in the previous 
Grseco-Bulgarian dust-up. Of course the Staff 
didn't find it out till afterwards. It only cost us a 
few thousand dead and the Staff were all right in 
Salonica, so there was no great harm done ! Till then 
the thing was a picnic. On fine mornings the 
Colonel and I rode down the pass to see Don battery, 
climbed the mountain to the stone sangar which was 
their O.P. and watched them shoot — they were a 
joyous unshaven crowd — went on down the other 
side to the French front line and reconnoitred the 
country for advanced positions and generally got 
the hang of things. 

As I knew French there were occasions when I was 
really useful, otherwise it was simply a joy-ride for 
me until the rest of the batteries came into action. 
One morning the Colonel and I were right forward 
watching a heavy barrage on a village occupied by 
the Bulgar. The place selected by the Colonel from 
which to enjoy a really fine view was only ten yards 



118 GUN FODDER 

from a dead Bulgar who was in a kneeling position 
in a shallow trench with his hands in his pockets, 
keeled over at an angle. He'd been there many 
days and the wind blew our way. But the Colonel 
had a cold. I fled to a flank. While we watched, 
two enemy batteries opened. For a long time we 
tried to locate their flash. Then we gave it up and 
returned up the pass to where a French battery 
was tucked miraculously among holly bushes just 
under the crest. One of their officers was standing 
on the sky line, also endeavouring to locate those 
new batteries. So we said we'd have another try, 
climbed up off the road, lay upon our stomachs and 
drew out our glasses. Immediately a pip-squeak 
burst in the air about twenty yards away. Another 
bracketed us and the empty shell went whining down 
behind us. I thought it was rather a joke and but 
for the Colonel would have stayed there. 

He, however, was a regular Gunner, thank God, 
and slithered off the mound like an eel. I followed 
him like his shadow and we tucked ourselves half 
crouching, half sitting, under the ledge, with our 
feet on the road. 

For four hours the Bulgar tried to get that French 
battery. If he'd given five minutes more right he'd 
have done it, — and let us alone. As it was he 
plastered the place with battery fire every two 
seconds. — Shrapnel made pockmarks in the road, 
percussion bursts filled our necks with dirt from the 
ledge and ever the cases whined angrily into the 
ravine. We smoked many pipes. 

It was my first experience under shell fire. I found 



UBIQUE 119 

it rather like what turning on the quarter current 
in the electric chair must be, — most invigorating, 
but a little jumpy. One never knew. Thank heaven 
they were only pip-squeaks. During those crouch- 
ing hours two French poilus walked up the pass — 
it was impossible to go quickly because it was so 
steep — and without turning a hair or attempting 
to quicken or duck walked through that barrage 
with a sangfroid that left me gasping. Although in a 
way I was enjoying it, I was mighty glad to be under 
that ledge, and my heart thumped when the Colonel 
decided to make a run for it and went on thumping 
till we were a good thousand yards to a flank. 

The worst of it was, it was the only morning that 
I hadn't brought sandwiches. 

9. 

When the other three batteries went into action 
and the ammunition column tucked itself into dry 
nullahs along the road we moved up into Valandovo 
and established Brigade Headquarters in a farm- 
house and for many days the signallers and I toiled 
up and down mountains, laying air lines. It was 
an elementary sort of war. There were no balloons, 
no aeroplanes and camouflage didn't seem to matter. 
Infantry pack transport went up and down all day 
long. It was only in the valley that the infantry 
were able to dig shallow trenches. On the hills 
they built sangars, stone breastwork affairs. Barbed 
wire I don't remember to have seen. There were no 
gas shells, no 5.9's, nothing bigger than pip-squeaks. 
The biggest artillery the Allies possessed were two 



120 GUN FODDER 

120-centimetre guns called respectively Crache 
Mort and Chasse Boche. One morning two Heavy 
Gunners blew in and introduced themselves as being 
on the hunt for sixty -pounder positions. They were 
burning to lob some over into Strumnitza. We as- 
sisted them eagerly in their reconnaissance and they 
went away delighted, promising to return within 
three days. They were still cursing on the quayside 
when we came limping back to Salonica. Ap- 
parently there was no one qualified to give them the 
order to come up and help. In those days Strum- 
nitza was the Bulgar railhead, and they could have 
pounded it to bits. 

As it was, our brigade was the only English Gunner 
unit in action, and the Battery Commanders proved 
conclusively to the French (and the Bulgar) that 
the eighteen-pounder was a handy little gun. The 
French General ordered one of the 75 batteries to 
advance to Kajali. They reconnoitred the hills and 
reported that it was impossible without going ten 
miles round. The General came along to see for 
himself and agreed. The Captain of "C" battery, 
however, took a little walk up there and offered to 
get up if the Colonel would lend him a couple of 
hundred infantry. At the same time he pointed out 
that coming down in a hurry was another story, 
absolutely impossible. However, it was discussed 
by the powers that were and the long and short of it 
was that two of our batteries were ordered forward. 
" C " was the pioneer ; and with the two hundred 
infantry — horses were out of the question — and 
all the gunners they laboured from 4.30 p.m. to 



UBIQUE 121 

6 a.m. the next morning, at which hour they re- 
ported themselves in action again. It was a re- 
markable feat, brought about by sheer muscle and 
will power, every inch of the way a battle, up slopes 
that were almost vertical, over small boulders, round 
big ones with straining drag ropes for about two 
miles and a half. The 75's refused to believe it 
until they had visited the advanced positions. They 
bowed and said "Touche !" 

Then the snow came in blinding blizzards that 
blotted out the whole world and everybody went 
underground and lived in overcoats and stoked huge 
fires, — everybody except the infantry whose rifle 
bolts froze stiff, whose rations didn't arrive and 
who could only crouch behind their stone sangars. 
The cold was intense and they suffered terribly. 
When the blizzard ceased after about forty-eight 
hours the tracks had a foot of snow over them and 
the drifts were over one's head. 

Even in our little farmhouse where the Colonel 
and I played chess in front of a roaring fire, drinks 
froze solid on the mantelpiece and we remained 
muffled to the eyes. Thousands of rock pigeons ap- 
peared round the horse lines, fighting for the dropped 
grain, and the starving dogs became so fierce and 
bold that it was only wise to carry a revolver in the 
deserted villages. Huge brutes some of them, the 
size of Arab donkeys, a cross between a mastiff and 
a great Dane. Under that clean garment of snow 
which didn't begin to melt for a fortnight, the country 
was of an indescribable beauty. Every leaf on the 
trees bore its little white burden, firm and crisp, 



122 GUN FODDER 

and a cold sun appeared and threw wonderful lights 
and shadows. The mountains took on a virgin purity. 

But to the unfortunate infantry it was one long 
stretch of suffering. Hundreds a day came down 
on led mules in an agonised string, their feet bound 
in straw, their faces and hands blue like frozen meat. 
The hospitals were full of frost-bite cases, and 
dysentery was not unknown in the brigade. Pot- 
face in particular behaved like a hero. He had 
dysentery very badly but absolutely refused to let 
the doctor send him down. 

Our rations were none too good, and there were 
interminable spells of bully beef, fried, hashed, 
boiled, rissoled, au naturel with pickles, and bread 
became a luxury. We reinforced this with young 
maize which grew everywhere in the valley and had 
wonderful soup and corn on the cob, boiled in tinned 
milk and then fried. Then too the Vet. and I had 
a wonderful afternoon's wild bull hunting with 
revolvers. We filled the wretched animal with 
lead before getting near enough to give the coup de 
grace beside a little stream. The Vet. whipped off 
his tunic, turned up his sleeves and with a long trench 
knife conducted a masterly post mortem which re- 
sulted in about forty pounds of filet mignon. The 
next morning before dawn the carcase was brought 
in in the cook's cart and the Headquarters Staff 
lived on the fat of the land and invited all the battery 
commanders to the discussion of that excellent bull. 

10. 
From our point of view it wasn't at all a bad sort 



UBIQUE 123 

of war. We hadn't had a single casualty. The few 
rounds which ever came anywhere near the bat- 
teries were greeted with ironic cheers and the only 
troubles with telephone lines were brought about 
by our own infantry who removed lengths of five 
hundred yards or so to mend their bivvies with. 

But about the second week of December indi- 
cations were not wanting of hostile activity. Visi- 
bility was very bad owing to early morning fogs, but 
odd rounds began to fall in the valley behind us in 
the neighbourhood of the advancing wagon lines, and 
we fired on infantry concentrations and once even 
an S.O.S. Rifle fire began to increase and stray 
bullets hummed like bees on the mountain paths. 

In the middle of this I became ill with a tempera- 
ture which remained for four days in the neighbour- 
hood of 104°. The doctor talked of hospital but 
I'd never seen the inside of one and didn't want to. 

However on the fourth day it was the Colonel's 
order that I should go. It transpired afterwards 
that the doctor diagnosed enteric. So away I went 
labelled and wrapped up in a four-mule ambulance 
wagon. The cold was intense, the road appalling, 
the pip-squeaks not too far away until we got out 
of the valley, and the agony unprintable. That 
night was spent in a Casualty Clearing Station in the 
company of half a dozen infantry subalterns all 
splashed with blood. 

At dawn next morning when we were in a hospital 
train on our way to Salonica, the attack began. 
The unconsidered right flank was the trouble. 
Afterwards I heard about a dozen versions of the 



124 GUN FODDER 

show, all much the same in substance. The Bulgars 
poured over the right in thousands, threatening to 
surround us. Some of the infantry put up a wonder- 
ful fight. Others — didn't. Our two advanced 
batteries fired over open sights into the brown until 
they had exhausted their ammunition, then removed 
breech blocks and dial sights, destroyed the pieces 
and got out, arming themselves with rifles and am- 
munition picked up ad lib. on the way down. "Don " 
and "AC" went out of one end of the village of 
Valandovo while the enemy were held up at the 
other by the Gunners of the other two batteries. 
Then two armies, the French and English, got 
tangled up in the only road of retreat, engineers 
hastening the stragglers and then blowing up bridges. 
"Don" and "AC" filled up with ammunition and 
came into action in support of the other brigades 
at Causli which now opened fire while "Beer" and 
"C" got mounted and chased those of our infantry 
who "didn't", rounded them up, and marched them 
back to face the enemy. Meanwhile I was tucked 
away in a hospital bed in a huge marquee, trying to 
get news from every wounded officer who was brought 
in. The wildest rumours were going about but no 
one knew anything officially. I heard that the 
infantry were wiped out, that the gunners had all 
been killed or captured to a man, that the remnants 
of the French were fighting desperately and that the 
whole thing was a debacle. j 

There we all were helpless in bed, with nurses 
looking after us, splendid English girls, and all the 
time those infernal guns coming nearer and nearer. — 



UBIQUE 125 

At night, sleepless and in a fever, one could almost 
hear the rumble of their wheels, and from the next 
tent where the wounded Tommies lay in rows, one 
or two would suddenly scream in their agony and 
try and stifle their sobs, calling on Jesus Christ to 
kill them and put them out of their pain. — 

11. 

The brigade, when I rejoined, was in camp east 
of Salonica, under the lee of Hortiac, knee-deep in 
mud and somewhat short of kit. It was mighty 
good to get back and see them in the flesh again, 
after all those rumours which had made one sick 
with apprehension. 

Having pushed us out of Serbia into Greece the 
Bulgar contented himself with sitting on the frontier 
and making rude remarks. The Allies, however, 
silently dug themselves in and prepared for the de- 
fence of Salonica in case he should decide to attack 
again. The Serbs retired to Corfu to reform, and 
although Tino did a considerable amount of splutter- 
ing at this time, the only sign of interest the Greeks 
showed was to be more insolent in the streets. 

We drew tents and moved up into the hills and 
Woodbine joined us again, no longer a shipwrecked 
mariner in clothes off the peg, but in all the glory 
of new uniform and breeches out from home, a most 
awful duke. Pot-face and the commander of "C" 
battery went to hospital shortly afterwards and were 
sent home. Some of the Brass Hats also changed 
rounds. One, riding forth from a headquarters with 
cherry brandy and a fire in each room, looked upon 



126 GUN FODDER 

our harness immediately on our return from the re- 
treat and said genially that he'd heard that we were 
a "rabble." When however the commander of 
"Don" battery asked him for the name and regiment 
of his informant, the Brass Hat rode away muttering 
uncomfortably. Things were a little strained ! 

However Christmas was upon us, so we descended 
upon the town with cook's carts and visited the base 
cashier. Salonica was a modern Babel. The cobbles 
of the Rue Venizelos rang with every tongue in the 
world, — Turkish, Russian, Yiddish, Serbian, Span- 
ish, Levantine, Arabic, English, French, Italian, 
Greek and even German. Little tin swords clattered 
everywhere and the place was a riot of colour, the 
Jew women with green pearl-sewn headdresses, the 
Greek peasants in their floppy-seated trousers elbow- 
ing enormous Russian soldiers in loose blouses and 
jack boots who in turn elbowed small-waisted Greek 
highlanders in kilts with puffballs on their curly- 
toed shoes. There were black-robed priests with 
long beards and high hats, young men in red fezzes, 
civilians in bowlers, old hags who gobbled like 
turkeys and snatched cigarette ends, all mixed up in 
a kaleidoscopic jumble with officers of every country 
and exuding a smell of garlic, fried fish, decaying 
vegetable matter, and those aromatic eastern dishes 
which fall into no known category of perfume. 
Fling into this chaos numbers of street urchins of 
untold dirt chasing turkeys and chickens between 
one's legs and you get a slight idea of what sort of 
place we came to to do our Christmas shopping. 

The best known language among the shopkeepers 



UBIQUE 127 

was Spanish, but French was useful and after hours 
of struggling one forced a passage out of the crowd 
with barrels of beer, turkey, geese, pigs, fruit and 
cigarettes for the men, and cigars and chocolates, 
whisky, Grand Marnier and Cointreau for the mess. 
Some fund or other had decided that every man was 
to have a plum pudding, and these we had drawn 
from the A.S.C. on Christmas Eve. 

In Egypt letters had taken thirteen days to arrive. 
Here they took from fifteen to seventeen, sometimes 
twenty-one. Christmas Day however was one of 
the occasions when nothing came at all and we cursed 
the unfortunate post office in chorus. I suppose it's 
the streak of childhood in every man of us that makes 
us want our letters on the day. So the morning was 
a little chilly and lonely until we went round to see 
that the men's dinner was all right. It was, with 
lashings of beer. 

This second Christmas on active service was a 
tremendous contrast to the first. Then there was 
the service in the barn followed by that depressing 
lonely day in the fog and flat filth of Flanders. 
Now there was a clear sunny air and a gorgeous view 
of purple mountains with a glimpse of sea far off below. 

In place of Mass in the barn Woodbine and I 
went for a walk and climbed up to the white Greek 
church above the village, surrounded by cloisters 
in which shot up cypress trees, the whole picked out 
in relief against the brown hill. We went in. The 
church was empty but for three priests, one on the 
altar behind the screen, one in a pulpit on each side 
in the body of the church. For a long time we stood 



4 



128 GUN FODDER 

there listening as they flung prayers and responses 
from one to another in a high shrill nasal minor key 
that had the wail of lost souls in it. It was most 
un-Christmassy and we came out with a shiver into 
the sun. 

Our guest at dinner that night was a Serbian liaison 
officer from Divisional Headquarters. We stuffed 
him with the usual British food and regaled him with 
many songs to the accompaniment of the banjo and 
broke up still singing in the small hours but not hav- 
ing quite cured the ache in our hearts caused by 
"absent friends." 

12. 

The second phase of the campaign was one of end- 
less boredom, filthy weather and the nuisance of 
changing camp every other month. The boredom 
was only slightly relieved by a few promotions, 
two or three full lieutenants becoming captains and 
taking command of the newly arranged sections of 
D.A.C., and a few second lieutenants getting their 
second pip. I was one. The weather was character- 
istic of the country, unexpected, violent. About 
once a week the heavens opened themselves. Thunder 
crashed round in circles in a black sky at midday, 
great tongues of lightning lit the whole world in 
shuddering flashes. The rain made every nullah 
a roaring waterfall with three or four feet of muddy 
water racing down it and washing away everything 
in its path. The trenches round our bell tents were 
of little avail against such violence. The trench 
sides dissolved and the water poured in. These 



UBIQUE 129 

storms lasted an hour or two and then the sky 
cleared almost as quickly as it had darkened and 
the mountain peaks gradually appeared again, clean 
and fresh. On one such occasion, but much later 
in the year, the Adjutant was caught riding up from 
Salonica on his horse and a thunderbolt crashed to 
earth about thirty yards away from him. The horse 
stood trembling for full two minutes and then gal- 
loped home in a panic. 

The changing of camps seemed to spring from 
only one reason, — the desire for "spit and polish" 
which covers a multitude of sins. It doesn't matter 
if your gunners are not smart at gun drill or your 
subalterns in utter ignorance of how to lay out lines 
of fire and make a fighting map. So long as your gun 
park is aligned to the centimetre, your horse lines 
supplied conspicuously with the type of incinerator 
fancied by your Brigadier General, and the whole 
camp liberally and tastefully decorated with white 
stones, — then you are a crack brigade, and Brass 
Hats ride round you with oily smiles and pleasant re- 
marks and recommend each other for decorations. 

But adopt your own incinerator (infinitely more 
practical as a rule than the Brigadier General's) 
and let yourself be caught with an untidy gun park 
and your life becomes a hell on earth. We learnt 
it bitterly, until at last the Adjutant used to ride 
ahead with the R.S.M., a large fatigue party and 
several miles of string and mark the position of every 
gun muzzle and wagon wheel in the brigade. And 
when the storms broke and washed away the white 
stones the Adjutant would dash out of his tent im- 



130 GUN FODDER 

mediately the rain ceased, calling upon God piteously, 
the R.S.M. irritably, and every man in the brigade 
would collect other stones for dear life. 

Time hung very heavy. The monotony of week 
after week of brigade fatigues, standing gun drill, 
exercising and walking horses, inspecting the men's 
dinners, with nothing to do afterwards except play 
cards, read, write letters and curse the weather 
and the war and all Brass Hats. Hot baths in camp 
were as usual as diamonds in oysters. Salonica 
was about twelve miles away for a bath, a long weary 
ride mostly at a walk on account of the going. But 
it was good to ride in past the village we used to call 
Peacockville, for obvious reasons, put the horses 
up in a Turkish stable in a back street in Salonica, 
and bathe and feed at the Tour Blanche and watch 
the crowd. It was a change at least from the 
eternal sameness of camp and the cramped dis- 
comfort of bell tents and there was always a touch 
of mystery and charm in the ride back in the moon- 
light. 

The whole thing seemed so useless, such an utter 
waste of life. There one sat in the mud doing 
nothing. The war went on and we weren't helping. 
All our civil ambitions and hopes were withering 
under our very eyes. One hopeless dawn succeeded 
another. I tried to write but my brain was like a 
sponge dipped into khaki dye. One yearned for 
France where at least there was fighting and leave, 
or if not leave then the hourly chance of a "blighty" 
wound. 

About April there came a welcome interlude. 



UBIQUE 131 

The infantry had also chopped and changed and been 
moved about and in the intervals had been kept 
warm and busy in digging a chain of defences in a 
giant hundred-mile half-circle around Salonica, the 
hub of our existence. The weather still didn't 
seem to know quite what it wanted to do. There 
was a hint of spring but it varied between blinding 
snowstorms, bursts of warm sun and torrents of rain. 

"Don" battery had been moved to Stavros in 
the defensive chain and the Colonel was to go down 
and do Group Commander. The Adjutant was 
left to look after the rest of the brigade. I went 
with the Colonel to do Adjutant in the new group. 
So we collected a handful of signallers, a cart with 
our kits and servants and set out on a two-day 
trek due east along the line of lakes to the other 
coast. 

The journey started badly in a howling snow- 
storm. To reach the lake level there was a one- 
way pass that took an hour to go down, and an hour 
and a half to climb on the return trip. The Colonel 
went on ahead to see the General. I stayed with 
the cart and fought my way through the blizzard. 
At the top of the pass was a mass of Indian transport. 
We all waited for two hours, standing still in the 
storm, the mud belly-deep because some unfortu- 
nate wagon had got stuck in the ascent. I remember 
having words with a Captain who sat hunched on 
his horse like a sack the whole two hours and refused 
to give an order or lend a hand when every one of 
his teams jibbed, when at last the pass was declared 
open. God knows how he ever got promoted. 



132 GUN FODDER 

However we got down at last and the sun came 
out and dried us. I reported to the Colonel and we 
went on in a warm golden afternoon along the lake 
shore, with ducks getting up out of the rushes in 
hundreds and, later, woodcock flashing over our 
heads on their way to water. As far as I remember 
the western lake is some eight miles long and about 
three wide at its widest part, with fairy villages 
nestling against the purple mountain background, 
the sun glistening on the minarets and the faint 
sound of bells coming across the water. We spent 
the night as guests of a battery which we found 
encamped on the shore and on the following morning 
trekked along the second lake which is about ten 
miles in length, ending at a jagged mass of rock 
and thick undergrowth which had split open into 
a wild wooded ravine with a river winding its way 
through the narrow neck to the sea about five miles 
farther on. 

We camped in the narrow neck on a sandy bay 
by the river, rock shooting up sheer from the back 
of the tents, the horses hidden under the trees. 
The Colonel's command consisted of one 60-pounder 
— brought round by sea and thrown into the shallows 
by the Navy who said to us, "Here you are, George. 
She's on terra firma. It's up to you now" — two 
naval 6-inch, one eighteen-pounder battery, "Don", 
one 4.5 howitzer battery, and a mountain battery 
whose commander rode about on a beautiful white 
mule with a tail trimmed like an hotel bell pull. 
"AC" battery of ours came along a day or two later 
to join the merry party because, to use the vulgar 



UBIQUE 133 

but expressive phrase, the Staff "got the wind 
up" and saw Bulgars behind every tree. 

13. 

In truth it was a comedy, — though there were 
elements of tragedy in the utter inefficiency dis- 
played. We rode round to see the line of our zone. 
It took two days because, of course, the General 
had to get back to lunch. Wherever it was possible 
to cut tracks, tracks had been cut, beautiful wide 
ones, making an enemy advance easy. They were 
guarded by isolated machine-gun posts at certain 
strategic points, and in the nullahs was a little 
barbed wire driven in on wooden stakes. Against 
the barbed wire however were piled masses of dried 
thorn, — utterly impassable but about as inflam- 
mable as gunpowder. This was all up and down 
the wildest country. If a massacre had gone on 
fifty yards to our right or left at any time we shouldn't 
have been able to see it. And the line of infantry 
was so placed that it was impossible to put guns 
anywhere to assist them. 

It is to be remembered that although I have two 
eyes, two ears, and a habit of looking and listening, 
I was only a lieutenant with two pips in those days 
and therefore my opinion is not of course worth the 
paper it is written on. Ask any Brass Hat ! 

An incident comes back to me of the action be- 
fore the retreat. I had only one pip then. Two 
General Staffs wished to make a reconnaissance. 
I went off at 3 a.m. to explore a short way, got back 
at eight o'clock after five hours on a cold and empty 



134 GUN FODDER 

stomach, met the Staffs glittering in the winter sun 
and led them up a goat track, rideable of course. 
They left the horses eventually and I brought them 
to the foot of the crest from which the reconnaissance 
was desired. The party was some twenty strong 
and walked up on to the summit and produced 
many white maps. I was glad to sit down and did 
so under the crest against a rock. Searching the 
opposite sky line with my glasses I saw several 
parties of Bulgars watching us, — only recognisable 
as Bulgars because the little of them that I could 
see moved from time to time. The Colonel was 
near me and I told him. He took a look and went 
up the crest and told the Staffs. The Senior Brass 
Hat said, "Good God ! What are you all doing up 
here on the crest ? Get under cover at once," — 
and he and they all hurried down. The recon- 
naissance was over ! 

On leading them a short way back to the horses 
(it saved quite twenty minutes' walk) it became 
necessary to pass through a wet boggy patch about 
four yards across. The same Senior Brass Hat 
stopped at the edge of it and said to me, "What the 
devil did you bring us this way for ? You don't 
expect me to get my boots dirty, do you ? — Good 
God!" 

I murmured something about active service, — 
but as I say I had only one pip then. — 

It isn't that one objects to being cursed. The 
thing that rankles is to have to bend the knee to a 
system whose slogan is efficiency, but which retains 
the doddering and the effete in high commands 



UBIQUE 135 

simply because they have a quarter of a century 
of service to their records. The misguided efforts 
of these dodderers are counteracted to a certain 
extent by the young keen men under them. But 
it is the dodderers who get the credit, while the real 
men lick their boots and have to kowtow in the most 
servile manner. Furthermore it is no secret. We 
know it and yet we let it go on : and if to-day there 
are twenty thousand unnecessary corpses among 
our million dead, after all, what are they among so 
many? The dodderers have still got enough life 
to parade at Buckingham Palace and receive another 
decoration and we stand in the crowd and clap our 
hands and say, "Look at old So-and-so! Isn't he 
a grand old man? Must be seventy -six if he's a 
day!" 

So went the comedy at Stavros. One Brass Hat 
dug a defence line at infinite expense and labour. 
Along came another, just a pip senior, looked round 
and said, "Good God! You've dug in the wrong 
place. — Must be scrapped." And at more expense 
and more labour a new line was dug. And then a 
third Brass Hat came along and it was all to do over 
again. Men filled the base hospitals and died of 
dysentery ; the national debt added a few more 
insignificant millions, — and the Brass Hats went 
on leave to Alexandria for a well-earned rest. 

Not only at Stavros did this happen but all round 
the half circle in the increasingly hot weather as the 
year became older and disease more rampant. 

After we'd been down there a week and just got 
the hang of the country another Colonel came and 



136 GUN FODDER 

took over the command of the group, so we packed 
up our traps and having bagged many woodcock and 
duck, went away, followed after a few days by 
"AC" and "Don." 

About that time, to our lasting grief, we lost our 
Colonel, who went home. It was a black day for 
the brigade. His thoughtfulness for every officer 
under him, his loyalty and unfailing cheeriness, had 
made him much loved. I, who had ridden with him 
daily, trekked the snowy hills in his excellent com- 
pany, played chess with him, strummed the banjo 
while he chanted half-remembered songs, shared the 
same tent with him on occasions and appreciated 
to the full his unfailing kindness, mourned him as 
my greatest friend. The day he went I took my 
last ride with him down to the rest-camp just outside 
Salonica, a wild threatening afternoon with a storm 
which burst on me in all its fury as I rode back 
miserably, alone. 

In due course his successor came and we moved 
to Yailajik — well called by the men Yellow-Jack — 
and the hot weather was occupied with training 
schemes at dawn, officers' rides and drills, examina- 
tions A and B (unofficial of course), horse shows and 
an eternity of unnecessary work while one gasped 
in shirt sleeves and stupid felt hats after the Anzac 
pattern; long, long weeks of appalling heat and 
petty worries, until it became a toss-up between 
suicide or murder. The whole spirit of the brigade 
changed. From having been a happy family work- 
ing together like a perfect team the spirit of dis- 
content spread like a canker. The men looked 



UBIQUE 137 

sullen and did their work grudgingly, going gladly 
to hospital at the first signs of dysentery. Subal- 
terns put in applications for the Flying Corps, — 
I was one of their number, — and ceased to take an 
interest in their sections. Battery Commanders 
raised sarcasm to a fine art and cursed the day that 
ever sent them to this ghastly backwater. 

I left the headquarters and sought relief in "C" 
battery where, encouraged by the sympathetic 
commanding officer, I got nearer to the solution of 
the mysterious triangle T.O.B. than I'd ever been 
before. He had a way of talking about it that the 
least intelligent couldn't fail to grasp. 

At last I fell ill and with an extraordinary gladness 
went down to the 5th Canadian hospital on the 
eastern outskirts of Salonica on the seashore. The 
trouble was an ear. Even the intensest pain, dulled 
by frequent injections of morphia, did not affect 
my relief in getting away from that brigade where, 
up to the departure of the Colonel, I had spent such 
a happy time. The pity of it was that everybody 
envied me. 

They talked of an operation. Nothing would 
have induced me to let them operate in that country 
where the least scratch turned septic. After several 
weeks I was sent to Malta where I was treated for 
twenty-one days. At the end of that time the 
specialist asked me if my career would be interfered 
with if he sent me home for consultation as to an 
operation. One reason he could not do it was that 
it was a long business, six weeks in bed at least, and 
they were already overfull. The prison door was 



138 GUN FODDER 

about to open ! I assured him that on the con- 
trary my career would benefit largely by a sight 
of home, and to my eternal joy he then and there, 
in rubber gloves, wrote a recommendation to send 
me to England. His name stands out in my memory 
in golden letters. 

Within twenty-four hours I was on board. 

The fact that all my kit was still with the battery 
was a matter of complete indifference. I would 
have left a thousand kits. At home all the leaves 
were turning, blue smoke was filtering out of red 
chimneys against the copper background of the 
beech woods — and they would be waiting for me 
in the drive. 



PART III 
THE WESTERN FRONT 






III. THE WESTERN FRONT 

1. 

England had changed in the eighteen months 
since we put out so joyously from Avonmouth. 
Munition factories were in full blast, food restrictions 
in force, women in all kinds of uniforms, London in 
utter darkness at night, the country dotted with 
hutted training camps. Everything was quiet. 
We had taken a nasty knock or two and washed 
some of our dirty linen in public, not too clean at 
that. My own lucky star was in the ascendant. 
The voyage completely cured me and within a week 
I was given a month's sick leave by the Medical 
Board, — a month of heaven more nearly describes 
it, for I passed my days in a state of bliss which 
nothing could mar, except perhaps the realisation, 
towards the end, of the fact that I had to go back 
and settle into the collar again. 

My mental attitude towards the war had changed. 
Whatever romance and glamour there may have 
been had worn off. It was just one long bitter 
waste of time, — our youth killed like flies by 
"dugouts" at the front so that old men and sick 
might carry on the race, while profiteers drew 
bloated profits and politicians exuded noxious gas 



142 GUN FODDER 

in the House. Not a comforting point of view to take 
back into harness. I was told on good authority 
that to go out to France in a field battery was a 
certain way of finding death. They were being 
flung away in the open to take another thousand 
yards of trench, so as to make a headline in the daily 
papers which would stir the drooping spirits of the 
old, the sick, and the profiteer over their breakfast 
egg. The embusque was enjoying those headlines 
too. The combing-out process had not yet begun. 
The young men who had never been out of Eng- 
land were Majors and Colonels in training camps. 
It was the officers who returned to duty from hos- 
pital, more or less cured of wounds or sickness, who 
were the first to be sent out again. The others 
knew a thing or two. 

That was how it struck me when I was posted to 
a reserve brigade just outside London. 

Not having the least desire to be "flung away in 
the open" I did my best to get transferred to a six- 
inch battery. The Colonel of the reserve brigade did 
his best but it was queered at once, without argu- 
ment or appeal, by the nearest Brass Hat, in the 
following manner. The Colonel having signed and 
recommended the formal application, spoke to the 
General personally on my behalf. 

"What sort of a fellow is he?" asked the General. 

"Seems a pretty useful man," said the Colonel. 

"Then we'll keep him," said the General. 

"The pity of it is," said the Colonel to me later, 
"that if I'd said you were a hopeless damned fool 
he would have signed it." 



THE WESTERN FRONT 143 

On many subsequent occasions the Colonel flung 
precisely that expression at me, so he might just as 
well have said it then. 

However, as it seemed that I was destined for a 
short life I determined to make it as merry as possible 
and in the company of a kindred spirit who was 
posted from hospital a couple of days after I was, 
and who is now a Bimbashi in the Soudan, I went 
up to town about three nights a week, danced and 
did a course of theatres. By day there was no work 
to do as the brigade already had far too many 
officers, none of whom had been out. The battery 
to which we were both posted was composed of 
category Cl men, — flat-footed unfortunates, unfit 
to fight on medical grounds, not even strong enough 
to groom horses properly. 

A futile existence in paths of unintelligence and 
unendeavour worshipping perforce at the altar of 
destruction, creating nothing, a slave to dishonesty 
and jobbery, — a waste of life that made one mad 
with rage in that everything beautiful in the world 
was snapped in half and flung away because the 
social fabric which we ourselves had made through 
the centuries had at last become rotten to the core 
and broken into flaming slaughter, and was being 
fanned by yellow press hypocrisy. Every ideal cried 
out against it. The sins of the fathers upon the 
wilfully blind children. The Kaiser was only the 
most pitch-covered torch chosen by Nemesis to set 
the bonfire of civilisation ablaze. But for one 
branch in the family tree he would have been Eng- 
land's monarch, and then — ? 



144 GUN FODDER 

There have been moments when I have regretted 
not having sailed to New York in August, 1914, — 
bitter moments when all the dishonesty has beaten 
upon one's brain and one has envied the pluck of 
the honest conscientious objector who has stood 
out against the ridicule of the civilised world. 

The only thought that kept me going was "sup- 
pose the Huns had landed in England and I not been 
fighting ? " It was unanswerable, — as I thought then. 

Now I wish that the Hun had landed in England 
in force and laid waste the East coast as he has 
devastated Belgium and the north of France. 
There would have been English refugees with per- 
ambulators and babies, profiteers crying Kamerad ! 
politicians fleeing the House. There would have 
been some hope of England's understanding. But 
she doesn't even now. There were in 1918 before 
the armistice men — men ! — who, because their 
valets failed to put their cuff links in their shirts 
one morning, were sarcastic to their war-working 
wives and talked of the sacrifices they had made 
for their country. 

How dared they have valets while we were lousy 
and unshaved, with rotting corpses round our gun 
wheels? How dared they have wives while we "un- 
married and without ties" were either driven in our 
weakness to licensed women, or clung to our chastity 
because of the one woman with us every hour in our 
hearts whom we meant to marry if ever we came 
whole out of that hell ? 

Christmas came. They would not let me go 
down to that little house among the pines and beeches 



THE WESTERN FRONT 145 

which has ever been "home" to me. But the day 
was spent quietly in London with my best pal. 
Seven days later I was on my way to Ireland as one 
of the advance representatives of the Division. 
The destination of my brigade was Limerick, that 
place of pigs and smells and pretty girls and school- 
boy rebels who chalked on every barrack wall 
"Long live the Kaiser! Down with the King!" 
Have you ever been driven to the depths of despair, 
seen your work go to pieces before your eyes, and 
spent the dreadful days in dishonest idleness on the 
barrack square, hating it all the while but unable 
to move hand or foot to get out of the mental morass ? 
That is what grew up in Limerick. Even now my 
mind shivers in agony at the thought of it. 

Reinforcements had poured into the battery of 
cripples and the order came that from it a fighting 
battery should be formed. As senior subaltern, who 
had been promised a captaincy, I was given charge 
of them. The only other officer with me was the 
loyalest pal a man ever had. He had been promoted 
on the field for gallantry, having served ten years 
in the ranks as trumpeter, gunner, corporal and 
sergeant. Needless to say he knew the game back- 
wards and was the possessor of amazing energy and 
efficiency. He really ought to have had the com- 
mand, for my gunnery was almost nil, but I had one 
pip more than he and so the system put him under 
my orders. So we paraded the first men, and told 
them off into sections and were given a horse or 
two, gradually building up a battery as more re- 
inforcements arrived. 



146 GUN FODDER 

How we worked ! The enthusiasm of a first com- 
mand ! For a fortnight we never left the barracks, — 
drilling, marching, clothing and feeding the fighting 
unit of which we hoped such great things. All our 
hearts and souls were in it and the men themselves 
were keen and worked cheerily and well. One 
shook off depressing philosophies and got down to 
the solid reality of two hundred men. The early 
enthusiasm returned and Pip Don — as my pal was 
called — and I were out for glory and killing Huns. 

The Colonel looked us over and was pleased. 
Life wasn't too bad, after all. 

And then the blight set in. An officer was posted 
to the command of the little fighting unit. 

In a week all the fight had gone out of it. In 
another week Pip Don and I declared ourselves 
beaten. All our interest was killed. The sergeant 
major, for whom I have a lasting respect, was like 
Bruce's spider. Every time he fell, he at once 
started re-climbing. He alone was responsible for 
whatever discipline remained. The captaincy which 
I had been promised on certain conditions was filled 
by some one else the very day I carried out the con- 
ditions. It didn't matter. Everything was so hope- 
less that the only thing left was to get out, — and 
that was the one thing we couldn't do because we 
were more or less under orders for France. It 
reached such a pitch that even the thought of being 
flung away in the open was welcome. At least it 
would end it all. There was no secret about it. 
The Colonel knew. Didn't he come to my room 
one night and say, "Look here, Gibbs, what is the 



THE WESTERN FRONT 147 

matter with your battery?" And didn't we have 
another try, and another ? 

So for a time Pip Don and I smoked cigarettes 
on the barrack square, strolling listlessly from parade 
to parade, cursing the fate that should have brought 
us to such dishonour. We went to every dance in 
Limerick, organised concerts, patronised the theatre 
and filled our lives as much as we could with out- 
side interests until such time as we should go to 
France. And then. — It would be different when 
shells began to burst ! 

2. 

In the ranks I first discovered that it was a struggle 
to keep one's soul alive. That struggle had proved 
far more difficult as an officer in the later days of 
Salonica. The bitterness of Limerick, together with 
the reason, as I saw it, of the wholesale slaughter, 
made one's whole firmament tremble. Rough hands 
seemed to tear down one's ideals and fling them in 
the mud. One's picture of God and religion faded 
under the red light of war. One's brain flickered 
in the turmoil, seeking something to cling to. What 
was there? Truth? There was none. Duty? It 
was a farce. Honour ? It was dead. There was 
only one thing left, one thing which might give them 
all back again, — Love. 

If there was not that in one's heart to keep fra- 
grant, to cherish, to run to for help, to look forward 
to as the sunshine at the end of a long and awful 
tunnel then one's soul would have perished and a 
bullet been a merciful thing. 



148 GUN FODDER 

I was all unconscious that it had been my salvation 
in the ranks, in Salonica. Now on the eve of going 
out to the Western Front I recognised it for the first 
time to the full. The effect of it was odd, — a 
passionate longing to tear off one's khaki and leave 
all this uncleanness, and at the same time the cer- 
tain knowledge that one must go on to the very end, 
otherwise one would lose it. If I had been offered 
a war job in New York how could I have taken it, 
unwounded, the game unfinished, much as New 
York called me? So its third effect was a fierce 
impatience to get to France, making at least one 
more battery to help to end the war. 

The days dragged by, the longer from the new 
knowledge within me. From time to time the Sinn 
Fein gave signs of renewed activity and either we 
were all confined to barracks in consequence, presum- 
ably to avoid street fighting, or else we hooked into 
the guns and did route marches through and round 
about the town. From time to time arrests were 
made but no open conflict recurred. Apart from 
our own presence there was no sign of war in Ire- 
land. Food of all kinds was plentiful and cheap, 
restrictions nil. The streets were well lit at night. 
Gaiety was the keynote. No aeroplanes dropped 
bombs on that brilliant target. The Hun and pro- 
Hun had spent too much money there. 

Finally our training was considered complete. 
The Colonel had laboured personally with all the 
subalterns and we had benefited by his caustic 
method of imparting knowledge. And so once 
more we sat stiffly to attention while Generals rode 



THE WESTERN FRONT 149 

round us, metaphorically poking our ribs to see if we 
were fat enough for the slaughter. Apparently we 
were, for the fighting units said good-bye to their 
parent batteries — how gladly ! — and shipped across 
to England to do our firing practice. 

The camp was at Heytesbury on the other side of 
the vast plain which I had learnt so well as a trooper. 
We were a curious medley, several brigades being 
represented, each battery a little distrustful of the 
next, a little inclined to turn up its nose. Instead 
of being "AC", "Beer", "C" and "Don" as before 
we were given consecutive numbers, well into the 
hundreds, and after a week or so of dislocation were 
formed into brigades, and each put under the com- 
mand of a Colonel. Then the stiffness wore off -in 
friendly competition of trying to pick the best 
horses from the remounts. Our men challenged 
each other to football, sergeant majors exchanged 
notes. Subalterns swapped lies about the war 
and Battery Commanders stood each other drinks 
in the mess. Within a fortnight we were all certain 
we'd got the best Colonel in England and con- 
gratulated ourselves accordingly. 

Meanwhile Pip Don and I were still outcasts in 
our own battery, up against a policy of continual 
distrust, suspicion, and scarcely veiled antagonism. 
It was at the beginning of April, 1917, that we first 
got to Heytesbury and snow was thick upon the 
ground. Every day we had the guns out behind the 
stables and jumped the men about at quick short 
series, getting them smart and handy, keeping their 
interest and keeping them warm. When the snow 



150 GUN FODDER 

disappeared we took the battery out mounted, 
taking turns in bringing it into action, shooting over 
the sights on moving targets — other batteries at 
work in the distance — or laying out lines for in- 
direct targets. We took the staff out on cross- 
country rides, scouring the country for miles and 
chasing hares — it shook them down into the 
saddle — carrying out little signalling schemes. 
In short we had a final polish up of all the knowledge 
we had so eagerly begun to teach them when he and 
I had been in sole command. I don't think either 
of us can remember any single occasion on which the 
commanding officer took a parade. 

Embarkation leave was in full swing, four days 
for all ranks, and the brigade next to us was ordered 
to shoot. Two range officers were appointed from 
our brigade. I was one. It was good fun and 
extremely useful. We took a party of signallers 
and all the rations we could lay hands on and oc- 
cupied an old red farmhouse tucked away in a fold 
of the plain in the middle of all the targets. An 
old man and his wife lived there, a quaint old couple, 
toothless and irritable, well versed in the ways of 
the army and expert in putting in claims for ficti- 
tious damages. Our job was to observe and register 
each round from splinter proofs, send in a signed 
report of each series, stop the firing by signalling 
if any stray shepherd or wanderer were seen on the 
range, and to see that the targets for the following 
day's shoot had not been blown down or in any other 
way rendered useless. It was a four-day affair, firing 
ending daily between three and four p.m. This left 



THE WESTERN FRONT 151 

us ample time to canter to all the battery positions 
and work out ranges, angle of sight and compass 
bearings for every target, — information which 
would have been invaluable when our turn to fire 
arrived. Unfortunately, however, several slight alter- 
ations were intentionally made and all our labour 
was wasted. Still it was a good four days of brac- 
ing weather with little clouds scudding across a 
blue sky, never quite certain whether in ten minutes' 
time the whole world would be blotted out in a 
blizzard. The turf was springy, miles upon end- 
less miles, and we had some most wonderful gallops 
and practised revolver shooting on hares and rooks, 
going back to a huge tea and a blazing wood fire 
in the old draughty farmhouse. 

The practice over, we packed up and marched 
back to our respective batteries. Events of a most 
cataclysmic nature piled themselves one upon the 
other, — friction between the commanding officer 
and myself, orders to fire on a certain day, orders to 
proceed overseas on a certain later day, and my 
dismissal from the battery, owing to the aforesaid 
friction, on the opening day of the firing. Pip Don 
was furious, the commanding officer wasn't, and I 
*' pursued a policy of masterly inactivity." The 
outcome of the firing was not without humour and 
certainly altered the whole future career of at least 
two of us. The Captain and the third subaltern 
left the battery and became "details." The com- 
manding officer became second in command under 
a new Major who dropped out of the blue and I was 
posted back to the battery, together with a new 



152 GUN FODDER 

third subaltern who had just recovered from wounds. 

The business of getting ready was speeded up. 
The Ordnance Department, hitherto of miserly 
reluctance, gave us lavishly of their best. Gas 
masks were dished out and every man marched 
into a gas chamber, — there either to get gassed 
or come out with the assurance that the mask had no 
defects ! Final issues of clothing and equipment 
kept the Q.M.S. sweating from dawn to dusk and the 
Major signed countless pay books, indents and docu- 
ments generally. 

Thus we were ready and eager to go and strafe 
the Hun in the merry month of May, 1917. 



The personnel of the battery was odd but ex- 
tremely interesting. Pip Don and myself knew 
every man, bombardier, corporal and sergeant, what 
he had done, tried to do, or could do. In a word 
we knew the battery inside out and exactly what it 
was worth. Not a man of them had ever been on 
active service but we felt quite confident that the 
test of shell fire would not find them wanting. The 
great majority of them were Scots and they were all 
as hard as nails. 

The third subaltern was an unknown quantity 
but all of us had been out. The Captain hadn't. 

The Major had been in every battle in France 
since 1914, but he didn't know us or the battery, 
and if we felt supremely confident in him, it was, to 
say the least of it, impossible for him to return the 
compliment. He himself will tell you that he didn't 



THE WESTERN FRONT 153 

win the confidence of the battery until after a bold 
and rapidly-decided move in full light of day which 
put us on the flank of a perfectly hellish bombard- 
ment. That may be true of some of the men, but 
as far as Pip Don and myself went we had adopted 
him after the first five minutes and never swerved, — 
having, incidentally, some wonderful arguments 
about him in the sleeping quarters at Heytesbury 
with the subalterns of other batteries. 

It is extraordinary how the man at the head of a 
little show like that remains steadily in the lime- 
light. Everything he does, says or looks is noted, 
commented on and placed to either his credit or 
debit until the men have finally decided that he's 
all right or — not. If they come to the first de- 
cision, then the Major's life is not more of a burden 
to him than Divisional and Corps Staffs and the 
Hun can make it. The battery will do anything he 
asks of it at any hour of day or night and will go on 
shooting till the last man is knocked out. If on 
the other hand they decide that he is not all right, 
God help him. He gives orders. They are not 
carried out. Why? An infinite variety of super- 
excellent excuses. It is a sort of passive resistance, 
and he has got to be a mighty clever man to unearth 
the root of it and kill it before it kills him. 

We went from Southampton to Havre — it looked 
exactly the same as when I'd landed there three 
years previously — and from Havre by train to 
Merville. There a guide met us in the chilly dawn 
and we marched up to Estaires, the guide halting 
us at a mud patch looking like the abomination of 



154 GUN FODDER 

desolation, which he said was our wagon line. It 
was only about seven miles from the place where I'd 
been in the cavalry and just as muddy, but some- 
how I was glad to be back. None of those side 
shows at the other end of the map had meant any- 
thing. France was obviously where the issue would 
ultimately be decided and, apart from the Darda- 
nelles, where the only real fighting was, or ever had 
been. Let us therefore get on with the war with 
all speed. Every year had brought talk of peace 
before Christmas, soon dwindling into columns about 
preparations for another winter campaign. Even 
our own men just landed discussed the chances of 
being back in Scotland for the New Year ! 

We were an Army brigade, — one of a series of 
illegitimate children working under Corps orders 
and lent to Divisions who didn't evince any friendli- 
ness when it came to leave allotments, or with- 
drawn from our Divisional area to be hurried to 
some other part of the line and flung in in heaps to 
stiffen the barrage in some big show. Nobody 
loved us. Divisions saved their own people at our 
expense, — it was always an Army brigade which 
hooked in at zero hour and advanced at zero + 15, 
until after the Cambrai show. Ordnance wanted to 
know who the hell we were and why our indents had 
a Divisional signature and not a Corps one, or why 
they hadn't both, or neither ; A.S.C. explained with 
a straight face how we always got the best fresh meat 
ration ; Corps couldn't be bothered with us, until 
there was a show brewing ; Army were polite but in- 
credulous. 



THE WESTERN FRONT 155 

The immortal Pyecroft recommends the purchase 
of a ham as a sure means of seeing life. As an 
alternative I suggest joining an Army brigade. 

4. 

In the old days of trench warfare the Armentieres 
front was known as the peace sector. The town 
itself, not more than three thousand yards from the 
Hun, was full of happy money-grubbing civilians 
who served you an excellent dinner and an equally 
excellent bottle of wine, or, if it was clothes you 
sought, directed you to Burberry's, almost as well 
installed as in the Hay market. Divisional infantry 
used it as a rest billet. Many cook's carts ambled 
peacefully along the cobbled streets laden with eggs, 
vegetables and drinks for officers' messes. Now 
and then a rifle was fired in the front line, resulting, 
almost, in a Court of Enquiry. Three shells in three 
days was considered a good average, a trench mortar 
a gross impertinence. 

Such was the delightful picture drawn for us by 
veterans who heard we were going there. 

The first step was the attaching of so many officers 
and N.C.O.'s to a Divisional battery in the line for 
"instruction." The Captain and Pip Don went up 
first and had a merry week. The Major and I went 
up next and heard the tale of their exploits. The 
battery to which we were attached, in command of 
a shell-shocked Major, was in a row of houses, in 
front of a smashed church on the fringe of the town, 
and I learnt to take cover or stand still at the blast 
of a whistle which meant aeroplanes ; saw a fighting 



156 GUN FODDER 

map for the first time; an S.O.S. board in a gun 
pit and the explanation of retaliation targets ; read 
the Divisional Defence Scheme through all its count- 
less pages and remained in statu quo; went round 
the front-line trench and learned that a liaison 
officer didn't take his pyjamas on raid nights; 
learned also that a trench mortar bombardment 
was a messy, unpleasant business ; climbed rung by 
rung up a dark and sooty chimney, or was hauled 
up in a coffin-like box, to a wooden deck fitted with 
seats and director heads and telescopes and gazed 
down for the first time on No Man's Land and the 
Hun trench system and as far as the eye could reach 
in his back areas, learning somewhat of the diffi- 
culties of flank observation. Every day of that 
week added depths to the conviction of my exceed- 
ing ignorance. Serbia had been nothing like this. 
It was elementary, child's play. The Major too 
uttered strange words like calibration, meteor cor- 
rections, charge corrections. A memory of Salonica 
came back to me of a huge marquee in which we had 
all sat and listened to a gilded staff officer who had 
drawn diagrams on a blackboard and juggled with 
just such expressions while we tried hard not to go 
to sleep in the heat; and afterwards the Battery 
Commanders had argued it and decided almost 
unanimously that it was "all right for schools of 
gunnery but not a damn bit o' use in the field." 
To the Major, however, these things seemed as ordi- 
nary as whisky and pickles. 

I came to the conclusion that the sooner I began 
to learn something the better. It wasn't easy be- 



THE WESTERN FRONT 157 

cause young Pip Don had the hang of it all, so he 
and the Major checked each other's figures while 
I looked on, vainly endeavouring to follow. There 
was never any question as to which of us ought to 
have had the second pip. However it worked it- 
self out all right because, owing to the Major, he 
got his captaincy before I did, which was the best 
possible thing that could have happened, for I 
then became the Major's right-hand man and felt 
the responsibility of it. 

At the end of our week of instruction the brigade 
went into action, two batteries going to the right 
group, two to the left. The group consisted of the 
Divisional batteries, trench mortar batteries, the 
60-pounders and heavy guns attached like ourselves. 
We were on the left, the position being just in front 
of a 4.5 howitzer battery and near the Lunatic 
Asylum. 

It was an old one, four gun pits built up under a 
row of huge elms, two being in a row of houses. 
The men slept in bunks in the pits and houses; 
for a mess we cleaned out a room in the chateau 
at the corner which had been sadly knocked about, 
and slept in the houses near the guns. The chateau 
garden was full of lilac and roses, the beds all over- 
grown with weeds and the grass a jungle, but still 
very beautiful. Our zone had been allotted and our 
own private chimney O.P. — the name of which I 
have forgotten — and we had a copy of that mar- 
vellous defence scheme. 

Then for a little we found ourselves in the routine 
of trench warfare, — tours of duty at the O.P. on 



158 GUN FODDER 

alternate days and keeping a detailed log book in 
its swaying deck, taking our turn weekly to supply 
a liaison officer with the infantry who went up at 
dark, dined in their excellent mess, slept all night 
in the signalling officer's bunk, and returned for a 
shave and a wash after breakfast next morning; 
firing retaliation salvos at the call of either the O.P. 
or the infantry ; getting up rations and ammunition 
and letters at a regular hour every night; sending 
off the countless "returns" which are the curse of 
soldiering ; and quietly feeling our feet. 

The O.P. was in an eastern suburb called Houp- 
lines, some twenty minutes' walk along the tram 
lines. At dawn one had reached it with two sig- 
nallers and was looking out from the upper deck 
upon an apparently peaceful countryside of green 
fields splashed yellow with mustard patches, dotted 
with sleepy cottages from whose chimneys smoke 
never issued, woods and spinneys in all the glory 
of their spring budding running up on to the ridge, 
the Aubers ridge. The trenches were an intricate 
series of gashes hidden by Nature with poppies and 
weeds. Then came a grim brown space unmarked 
by any trench, tangled with barbed wire, and then 
began the repetition of it all except for the ridge 
at our own trenches. The early hours were chilly 
and misty and one entered in the log book, "6 a.m. 
Visibility nil." 

But with the sun the mist rolled up like a blind 
at one's window and the larks rocketed into the clear 
blue as though those trenches were indeed deserted. 
Away on the left was a town, rising from the curling 



THE WESTERN FRONT 159 

river in terraces of battered ruins, an inexpressible 
desolation, silent, empty, dead. Terrible to see 
that gaping skeleton of a town in the flowering coun- 
tryside. Far in the distance, peeping above the 
ridge and visible only through glasses, was a faint 
pencil against the sky — the great factory chimney 
outside Lille. 

Peace seemed the keynote of it all in the soft per- 
fumed heat of that early summer. Yet eyes looked 
steadily out from every chimney and other eyes from 
the opposite ridge ; and with just a word down the 
wire trenches went in smoking heaps, houses fell like 
packs of cards touched by a child's finger, noise beat 
upon the brain and Death was the master whom 
we worshipped, upon whose altar we made bloody 
sacrifice. 

We hadn't been there much more than a week 
when we had our first hint of the hourly reality of 
it. The third subaltern, who hadn't properly re- 
covered from the effect of his wound, was on his 
way up to the O.P. one morning and had a mis- 
adventure with a shell. He heard it coming, a big 
one, and sought refuge in the nearest house. The 
shell unfortunately selected the same house. 

When the dust had subsided and the ruins had as- 
sumed their final shape the subaltern emerged, un- 
wounded, but unlike his former self. — The doctor 
diagnosed shell shock and the work went on without 
him. 

It seemed as though that were the turning point 
in the career of the peace sector. 

The Hun began a leisurely but persistent de- 



160 GUN FODDER 

struction of chimneys with five-nines. One heard 
the gun in the distance, not much more than the 
popping of a champagne cork at the other end of the 
Carlton Grill. Some seconds later you thought 
you heard the inner circle train come in at Baker 
Street. Dust choked you, the chimney rocked in 
the frightful rush of wind, followed a soul-shaking 
explosion, — and you looked through the back 
aperture of the chimney to see a pillar of smoke and 
falling earth spattering down in the sunshine. And 
from the lower deck immediately beneath you came 
the voice of the signaller, "They ought to give us 
sailor suits up 'ere, sir !" 

And passing a finger round the inside of your 
sticky collar, which seemed suddenly a little tight, 
you sat down firmly again and said, "Yes. — Is the 
steward about?" 

Within sixty seconds another champagne cork 
popped. Curse the Carlton Grill ! 

In addition to the delights of the O.P. the Hun 
"found" the battery. It happened during the week 
that the Captain came up to have a look round and 
in the middle of the night. I was sleeping blissfully 
at liaison and returned next morning to find a most 
unpleasant smell of cordite hanging about, several 
houses lying on the pavement, including the one 
Pip Don and I shared, great branches all over the 
road and one gun pit looking somewhat bent. It 
appeared that Pip Don had spent the remainder of 
the night rounding up gunners in his pyjamas. 
No one was hurt. The Captain returned to the 
wagon line during the course of the morning. 



THE WESTERN FRONT 161 

Having found us, the Hun put in a few hundred 
rounds whenever he felt bored, — during the 9 a.m. 
parade, at lunch time, before tea and at the crack 
of dawn. The old red garden wall began to look like 
a Gruyere cheese, the road was all pockmarked, 
the gun pits caught fire and had to be put out, the 
houses began to fall even when there was no shelling 
and it became a very unhealthy corner. Through 
it all the Major was a tower of strength. So long 
as he was there the shelling didn't seem to matter, 
but if he were absent one didn't quite know whether 
to give the order to clear for the time being or stick 
it out. The Huns' attentions were not by any means 
confined to our position. The systematic bombard- 
ment of the town had begun and it became the usual 
thing to hear a horrible crackling at night and see 
the whole sky red. The Major of one of our batteries 
was killed, the senior subaltern badly wounded and 
several of their guns knocked out by direct hits. 
We were lucky. 

5. 

Meanwhile the Right Group, who had been watch- 
ing this without envy from the undisturbed calm 
of the countryside, decided to make a daylight raid 
by way of counter-attraction and borrowed us for 
the occasion. The Major and I went down to 
reconnoitre a battery position and found a delightful 
spot behind a hedge, under a row of spreading elms. 
Between the two, camouflage was unnecessary and, 
as a cobbled road ran immediately in front of the 
hedge, there was no danger of making any tracks. 



162 GUN FODDER 

It was a delightful position with a farmhouse two 
hundred yards along the road. The relief of getting 
out of the burning city, of not having to dodge shells 
at unexpected moments, of knowing that the rations 
and ammunition could come up without taking a 
twenty to one chance of being scuppered ! 

The raid was just like any other raid, except that 
it happened to be the first barrage we fired, the first 
barrage table we worked out, the first time we used 
the 106 fuze, and the first time that at the eleventh 
hour we were given the task, in which some one else 
had failed, of cutting the wire. I had been down 
with the Major when he shot the battery in, — 
and hadn't liked it. In places there was no com- 
munication trench at all and we had to crawl on our 
bellies over a chaos of tumbled earth and revetments 
in full few of any sniper, and having to make fre- 
quent stops because the infernal signaller would lag 
behind and turn off. And a few hours before the 
show the Major was called upon to go down there 
and cut the wire at all costs. Pip Don was signalling 
officer. He and every available signaller, stacks 
of wire and lamps, spread themselves in a living 
chain between the Major in the front-line trench and 
me at the battery. Before going the Major asked 
me if I had the barrage at my finger tips. I had. 
Then if he didn't get back in time, he said, I could 
carry out the show all right ? I could, — and 
watched him go with a mouth full of bitter curses 
against the Battery Commander who had failed to 
cut that wire. My brain drew lurid pictures of 
stick-bombs, minnies, pineapples, pip squeaks and 



THE WESTERN FRONT 163 

five-nines being the reason why the Major wouldn't 
get back "in time." And I sat down by the tele- 
phonist, praying for the call that would indicate 
at least his safe arrival in the front-line trench. 

Beside every gun lay a pile of 106 fuzes ready. 
Orders were to go on firing if every German plane 
in the entire Vaterland came over. — Still they 
weren't through on the 'phone ! 

I went along from gun to gun, making sure that 
everything was all right and insisting on the ne- 
cessity of the most careful laying, stopping from time 
to time to yell to the telephonist "Through yet?" 
and getting a "No, sir" every time that almost made 
me hear those cursed minnies dropping on the Major. 
At last he called up. The tension was over. We 
had to add a little for the 106 fuze but each gun was 
registered on the wire within four rounds. The 
Major was a marvel at that. Then the shoot 
began. 

Aeroplanes came winging over, regardless of our 
Archies. But we, regardless of the aeroplanes, were 
doing "battery fire 3 sees." as steadily as if we were 
on Salisbury Plain, getting from time to time the 
order, "Five minutes more right." We had three 
hundred rounds to do the job with and only about 
three per gun were left when the order "Stop" 
arrived. I stopped and hung on to the 'phone. 
The Major's voice, coming as though from a million 
miles away, said, "Napoo wire. How many more 
rounds?" 

"Three per gun, sir." 

"Right. — All guns five degrees more right for 



164 GUN FODDER 

the onlooker, add two hundred, three rounds gun 
fire." 

I made it so, received the order to stand down, 
put the fitter and the limber gunners on to sponging 
out, — and tried to convince myself that all the 
noise down in front was miles away from the Major 
and Pip Don. — It seemed years before they 
strolled in, a little muddy but as happy as lambs. 

It occurred to me then that I knew something at 
least of what our women endured at home every 
day and all day, — just one long suspense, without 
even the compensation of doing anything. 

The raid came off an hour or so later like clock- 
work, without incident. Not a round came back 
at us and we stood down eventually with the feeling 
of having put in a good day's work. 

We were a very happy family in those days. The 
awful discouragement of Limerick had lifted. Bom- 
bardments and discomforts were subjects for humour, 
work became a joy, "crime" in the gun line dis- 
appeared and when the time arrived for sending 
the gunners down to the wagon line for a spell there 
wasn't one who didn't ask if he might be allowed to 
stay on. It was due entirely to the Major. For 
myself I can never be thankful enough for having 
served under him. He came at a time when one 
didn't care a damn whether one were court-mar- 
tialled and publicly disgraced. One was "through" 
with the Army and cared not a curse for discipline 
or appearances. With his arrival all that was swept 
away without a word being said. Unconsciously he 
set a standard to which one did one's utmost to 



THE WESTERN FRONT 165 

live, and that from the very moment of his arrival. 
One found that there was honour in the world and 
loyalty, that duty was not a farce. In some ex- 
traordinary way he embodied them all, forcing upon 
one the desire for greater self-respect ; and the only 
method of acquiring it was effort, physical and 
mental, in order to get somewhere near his high 
standard. I gave him the best that was in me. 
When he left the brigade, broken in health by the 
ceaseless call upon his own effort, he wrote me a 
letter. Of all that I shall take back with me to 
civil life from the Army that letter is what I value 
most. 

6. 

We had all cherished the hope that we had seen 
the last of the town; that Right Group, com- 
manded by our own Colonel, would keep us in our 
present position. 

There was a distinct drop in the mental tempera- 
ture when, the raid over, we received the order to 
report back to Left Group. But we still clung to 
the hope that we might be allowed to choose a dif- 
ferent gun position. That avenue of trees was 
far too accurately pin-pointed by the Hun. Given, 
indeed, that there were many other places from which 
one could bring just as accurate and concentrated 
fire to bear on our part of the zone, it was criminal 
folly to order us back to the avenue. That, how- 
ever, was the order. It needed a big effort to find 
any humour in it. 

We hooked in and pulled out of that peaceful 
raid position with a sigh of regret and bumped our 



166 GUN FODDER 

way back over the cobbles through the burning town, 
keeping a discreet distance between vehicles. The 
two houses which had been the emplacements of 
the left section were unrecognisable as gun pits, so 
we used the other four pits and put the left section 
forward in front of the Asylum under camouflage. 
Not less than ten balloons looked straight down on 
the gun muzzles. The detachment lived in a cellar 
under the Asylum baths. 

Then Pip Don got his captaincy and went to an- 
other battery, to the safety and delights of the 
wagon line. One missed him horribly. We got a 
new subaltern who had never been out before but 
who was as stout as a lion. Within a few days our 
Captain was sent back ill and I followed Pip Don 
to the wagon lines as Captain in my own battery, 
a most amazing stroke of luck. We foregathered 
in a restaurant at Estaires and held a celebration 
dinner together, swearing that between us we would 
show the finest teams and the best harness in France, 
discussing the roads we meant to build through the 
mud, the improvements we were instantly going 
to start in the horse standings. 

Great dreams that lasted just three days ! Then 
his Major went on leave and he returned to command 
the battery, within five hundred yards of ours. 
The following day I was hurriedly sent for to find 
the whole world reeking with gas, mustard gas. 
Everybody had streaming eyes and noses. Within 
three minutes I was as bad as the rest. 

How anybody got through the next days I don't 
know. Four days and nights it lasted, one curious 



THE WESTERN FRONT 167 

hissing rain of shells which didn't burst with a 
crash but just uttered a little pop, upon which the 
ground became spattered with yellow liquid and 
a greyish fog spread round about. Five -nines, 
seventeen-inch, high explosive and incendiary shells 
were mixed in with the gas. Communications went 
wholesale. Fires roared in every quarter of the 
town. Hell was let loose and always the gas choked 
and blinded. Hundreds of civilians died of it, al- 
though they had previously been warned repeatedly 
to clear out. The conviction was so strong that 
Armentieres was the peace sector that the warnings 
were disregarded. 

The howitzer battery behind us had been rein- 
forced with ninety men and two officers the day 
before the show started. After that first night one 
officer was left. He had been up a chimney O.P. 
all night. The rest went away again in ambulance 
wagons. It was a holocaust, a shambles. A colos- 
sal attack was anticipated, and as all communica- 
tions had gone the signallers were out in gas masks 
all over the town, endeavouring to repair lines broken 
in a hundred places, and a constant look-out was 
kept for S.O.S. signals from the infantry. 

Except when shooting, all our men were kept 
underground in gas masks, beating the gas away 
with "flappers." The shelling was so ceaseless 
and violent round about the position that when men 
were sent from one section to another with messages 
they went in couples, their departure being tele- 
phoned to the section. If their arrival was not 
reported within ten minutes a search party was sent 



168 GUN FODDER 

to find them. To put one's head above ground at 
any moment of day or night was to take one's life 
in one's hands. Ammunition went up, and gun 
pits caught fire and the rain of shells never ceased. 
To get to the O.P. one had to fling oneself flat in a 
ditch, countless times always with an ear stretched 
for the next shell. From minute to minute it was 
a toss-up, and blackened corpses and screaming, 
mangled wounded left a bloody trail in the stinking, 
cobbled streets. The peace sector ! 

Was it just a Boche measure to prevent us from 
using the town as billets any more? Or was it a 
retaliation for the taking of the Messines Ridge 
which we had watched from our chimney not many 
weeks before, watched in awe and wonder, thanking 
God we were not taking part in that carnage ? 
The unhealthy life and the unceasing strain told 
even on the Major. We were forced to live by the 
light of candles in a filthy cellar beneath the chateau, 
snatching uneasy periods of rest when one lay on a 
bunk with goggles on one's smarting eyes, breathing 
with labour, listening to the heavy thud of shells 
up above and the wheezing and sneezing of the un- 
fortunate signallers, getting up and going about 
one's work in a sort of stupor, dodging shells rather 
by instinct than reason and tying up wounded with 
a dull sickness at the pit of one's stomach. 

But through it all one's thoughts of home inter- 
twined with the reek of death like honeysuckle 
with deadly nightshade, as though one's body were 
imprisoned in that foul underground hole while 
one's mind soared away and refused to come back. 



THE WESTERN FRONT 169 

It was all a strange dream, a clammy nightmare. 
Letters came, filled with all the delicious everyday 
doings of another world, filling one's brain with a 
scent of verbena and briar rose, like the cool touch 
of a woman's hands on the forehead of a man in 
delirium. 

7. 

On the morning of the fifth day the gas shelling 
ceased and the big stuff became spasmodic, — con- 
centrations of twenty minutes' duration. 

One emerged into the sun, sniffing carefully. 
The place was even more unrecognisable than one 
had imagined possible. The chateau still stood but 
many direct hits had filled the garden with blocks 
of stone. The Asylum was a mass of ruins, the 
grounds pitted with shell holes. The town itself 
was no longer a place to dine and shop. A few 
draggled inhabitants slunk timidly about like rats, 
probing the debris of what had once been their 
homes. The cobbled streets were great pits where 
seventeen-inch shells had landed, half filled again 
with the houses which had toppled over on either 
side. The hotels, church and shops in the big square 
were gutted by fire, great beams and house fronts 
blocking the roadway. Cellars were blown in and 
every house yawned open to the sky. In place of 
the infantry units and transports clattering about 
the streets was a desolate silent emptiness punctuated 
by further bombardments and the echoing crash of 
falling walls. And, over all, that sickly smell of 
mustard. 

It was then that the Left Group Commander had 



170 GUN FODDER 

a brain wave and ordered a trial barrage on the 
river Lys in front of Frelinghein. It was about as 
mad a thing as making rude noises at a wounded 
rhinoceros, given that every time a battery fired 
the Boche opened a concentration. 

Pip Don had had three seventeen-inch in the 
middle of his position. Nothing much was found 
of one gun and its detachment except a head, and a 
boot containing a human foot. 

The Group Commander had given the order, how- 
ever, and there was nothing to do but to get on 
with it. — 

The barrage was duly worked out. It was to 
last eighteen minutes with a certain number of lifts 
and switches. The Group Commander was going 
to observe it from one of the chimneys. 

My job was to look after the left section in the 
open in front of the Asylum. Ten minutes before 
zero I dived into the cellar under the baths breath- 
less, having dodged three five-nines. There I col- 
lected the men and gathered them under cover of 
the doorway. There we waited for a minute to see 
where the next would burst. It hit a building 
twenty-five yards away. 

"Now!" said I, "double!" and we ran, jump- 
ing shell holes and flinging ourselves flat for one 
more five-nine. The guns were reached all right, 
the camouflage pulled back and everything made 
ready for action. Five Hun balloons gazed down 
at us straight in front, and three of his aeroplanes 
came and circled low over our heads, and about 
every minute the deafening crash of that most 



THE WESTERN FRONT 171 

demoralising five-nine burst just behind us. I lay 
down on the grass between the two guns and gazed 
steadfastly at my wrist watch. 

"Standby!" 

The hands of the Numbers 3 stole out to the 
handles of the firing lever. 

"Fire!" 

The whole of Armentieres seemed to fire at once. 
The Group Commander up in his chimney ought 
to have been rather pleased. Four rounds per gun 
per minute was the rate. Then at zero plus one 
I heard that distant pop of Hun artillery and with 
the usual noise the ground heaved skyward between 
the two guns just in front. It wasn't more than 
twelve and a half yards away. The temptation to 
run made me itch all over. 

Pop ! it went again. My forehead sank on to 
my wrist watch. 

A good bracket, twelve and a half yards behind, 
and again lumps of earth spattered on to my back. 
The itch became a disease. The next round, ac- 
cording to all the laws of gunnery, ought to fall 
between my collar and my waist. — 

I gave the order to lift, straining my ears. 

There came no pop. I held my breath so that I 
might hear better, — and only heard the thumping 
of my heart. We lifted again and again. — 

I kept them firing for three full seconds after the 
allotted time before I gave the order to cease fire. 
The eighteen minutes — lifetimes — were over and 
that third pop didn't come till we had stopped. 
Then having covered the guns we ran helter-skelter, 



172 GUN FODDER 

each man finding his own way to the cellar through 
the most juicy bombardment we'd heard for quite 
twenty-four hours. 

Every man answered to his name in the cellar 
darkness |md there was much laughter and tobacco 
smoke while we got back our breath. 

Half an hour later their bombardment ceased. 
The sergeant and I went back to have a look at the 
guns. Number 5 was all right. Number 6, how- 
ever, had had a direct hit, one wheel had burnt away 
and she lay on her side, looking very tired. 

I don't know how many other guns had been 
knocked out in the batteries taking part, but, over 
and above the value of the ammunition, that trial 
barrage cost at least one eighteen-pounder ! And 
but for a bit of luck would have cost the lives of the 
detachment. 

8. 

The Major decided to move the battery and gained 
the reluctant consent of the Group Commander 
who refused to believe that there had been any 
shelling there till he saw the gun lying burnt and 
smashed and the pits burnt and battered. The Hun 
seemed to take a permanent dislike to the Asylum 
and its neighbourhood. It may have been coinci- 
dence but any time a man showed there a rain 
of shells chivvied him away. It took the fitter 
and the detachment about seven trips before they 
got a new wheel on, and at any hour of day or 
night you could bet on at least a handful of 
four-twos. The gas was intermittent. 



THE WESTERN FRONT 173 

At four o'clock in the morning after a worrying 
night when I had gone out twice to extinguish gun 
pits reported on fire, the Major announced that he 
was going to get the gun out and disappeared out 
of the cellar into the shell-lit darkness. 

Two hours later he called up from Group Head- 
quarters and told me to get the other out and take 
her to Archie Square, a square near the station, 
so called because a couple of anti-aircraft guns had 
used it as an emplacement in the peace days. With 
one detachment on each drag rope we ran the 
gantlet in full daylight of a four-two bombard- 
ment, rushing shell holes and what had once been 
flower beds, keeping at a steady trot, the sweat 
pouring off us. 

The Major met us in Archie Square and we went 
back to our cellar for breakfast together. 

Of the alternative positions one section was in 
Chapelle d'Armentieres. We hoped great things 
of it. It looked all right, pits being built in the 
back yards of a row of small houses, with plenty of 
trees for cover and lots of fruit for the men, — 
raspberries, plums, and red currants. Furthermore 
the shell holes were all old. The only crab about 
it was getting there. Between us and it were two 
much-shelled spots called Sandbag Corner and 
Snow Corner. Transports used to canter past 
them at night and the Hun had an offensive habit of 
dropping barrages on both of them any time after 
dark. But there was a place called Crown Prince 
House at Sandbag Corner and I fancy he used this 
as a datum point. While the left section went 



174 GUN FODDER 

straight on to the Chapelle the other two turned to 
the right at Snow Corner and were to occupy some 
houses just along the road and a garden next to 
them under camouflage. 

I shall not forget the night of that move in a 
hurry. In the afternoon the Major returned to the 
battery at tea time. There was no shelling save 
our own anti-aircraft, and perfect sunshine. 

"The teams are due at ten o'clock," said he. 
"The Hun will start shelling precisely at that time. 
We will therefore move now. Let us function." 
We functioned ! 

The battery was called together and the nature 
of the business explained. Each detachment pulled 
down the parados in the rear of the gun pits and such 
part of the pit itself as was necessary to allow the 
gun to come out, — no light task, because the pits 
had been built to admit the gun from the front. 
As soon as each reported ready double detachments 
were told off to the drag ropes and the gun, camou- 
flaged with branches, was run out and along the 
lane and round the corner of the chateau. There 
they were all parked, one by one. Then the am- 
munition was brought, piles of it. Then all the 
gun stores and kits. 

At ten o'clock the teams were heard at the other 
end of the cobbled street. A moment later shells 
began to burst on the position, gun fire. From the 
cover afforded by the chateau and the wall we loaded 
up without casualty and hooked in, bits of shell 
and wall flying over our heads viciously. 

I took charge of the left section in Archie Square. 



THE WESTERN FRONT 175 

The vehicles were packed, dixies tied on underneath. 
The Major was to follow with the four guns and the 
other subaltern at ten minutes' interval. 

Keeping fifty yards between vehicles I set off, 
walking in front of the leading gun team. We 
clattered along the cobbled streets, rattling and 
banging. The station was being bombarded. We 
had to go over the level crossing a hundred yards 
or so in rear of it. I gave the order to trot. A 
piece of shell sent up a shower of sparks in front of 
the rear gun team. The horses bucked violently 
and various dixies fell off, but I kept on until some 
distance to a flank under the houses. The dixies 
were rescued and re-tied. There was Sandbag 
Corner to navigate yet, and Snow Corner. It was 
horribly dark, impossible to see shell holes until you 
were into them, and all the time shells were bursting 
in every direction. The road up to the two Corners 
ran straight towards the Hun, directly enfiladed 
by him. We turned into it at a walk and were 
half-way along when a salvo fell round Crown Prince 
House just ahead. I halted immediately, wonder- 
ing where in heaven's name the next would fall, 
the horses snorting and prancing at my back. For 
a couple of minutes there was a ragged burst of gun 
fire while we stood with the bits missing us. Then 
I gave the order to trot. The horses needed no 
encouragement. I could only just keep in front, 
carrying maps and a torch and with most of my 
equipment on. We carried on past Crown Prince 
House, past Sandbag Corner and walked again, 
blown and tottering, towards Snow Corner, and 



176 GUN FODDER 

only just got past it when a barrage dropped right 
on the cross-roads. It was there that the Major 
would have to turn to the right with his four guns 
presently. Please God it would stop before he 
came along. 

We weren't very far behind the support lines now 
and the pop-pop-pop, pop-pop-pop of machine guns 
was followed by the whistling patter of bullets. I 
kept the teams as close under the houses as I dared. 
There was every kind of devilment to bring a horse 
down, open drains, coils of tangled wire, loose debris. 
Eventually we reached the Chapelle and the teams 
went off at the trot as soon as the ammunition was 
dumped and the kits were off. 

Then in the black night we heaved and hauled 
the guns into their respective pits and got them on 
to their aiming posts and S.O.S. lines. 

It was 3 a.m. before I got back to the new head- 
quarters, a house in an orchard, and found the 
Major safe and sound. 

A couple of days later the Major was ordered to 
a rest camp, and at a moment's notice I found my- 
self in command of the battery. It was one of the 
biggest moments of my life. Although I had gone 
down to take the Captain's place my promotion 
hadn't actually gone through and I was still a 
subaltern, faced with the handling of six guns at 
an extremely difficult moment and with the lives 
of some fifty men in my hands, to say nothing of 
the perpetual responsibility to the infantry in the 
front line. 

It was only when the Major had said good-bye 



THE WESTERN FRONT 177 

and I was left that I began to realise just how greatly 
one had depended on him. All the internal arrange- 
ments which he had handled so easily that they 
seemed no trouble loomed up as insurmountable 
difficulties — returns, ammunition, rations, relieving 
the personnel — all over and above the constant 
worry of gun detachments being shelled out, lines 
being cut, casualties being got away. It was only 
then that I realised what a frightful strain he must 
have endured during those days of continual gas 
and bombardment, the feeling of personal responsi- 
bility towards every single man, the vital necessity 
through it all of absolute accuracy of every angle 
and range lest by being flustered or careless one 
should shoot one's own infantry, the nights spent 
with one ear eternally on the telephone and the 
added strain of sleeplessness. — A lonely job, 
Battery Commander. 

I realised too what little use I had been to him, 
carrying out orders, yes, but not really taking any 
of the weight off his shoulders. 

The insignificance of self was never so evident as 
that first night with my ear to the 'phone, all the 
night noises accentuated in the darkness, the in- 
creasing machine-gun fire which might mean an 
attack, the crashing of shells which might get my 
supply wagons on their way back, the jump when the 
'phone buzzed suddenly, making my heart leap 
against my ribs, only to put me through to Group 
for an order to send over thirty rounds on a minnie 
firing inCl6do4. — It was good to see the black- 
ness turn to grey and recognise objects once more in 



178 GUN FODDER 

the room, to know that at last the infantry were 
standing down and to sink at last into deep sleep 
as the grey became rose and the sun awoke. 

Do the men ever realise, I wonder, that the Major 
who snaps out orders, who curses so freely, who gives 
them extra guards and docks their pay, can be a 
human being like themselves whose one idea is 
their comfort and safety, that they may strafe the 
Hun and not get strafed ? 

It was my first experience in handling subalterns 
too and I came to see them from a new point of view. 
Hitherto one's estimation of them had been limited 
by their being good fellows or not. The question 
of their knowledge or ignorance hadn't mattered. 
One could always give them a hand or do the thing 
oneself. Now it was reversed. Their knowledge, 
working capabilities and stout-heartedness came 
first. Their being good fellows was secondary, but 
helpful. The most ignorant will learn more in a 
week in the line than in ten weeks in a gunnery school. 

9. 

The first few days in the new position were calm. 
It gave one time to settle down. We did a lot of 
shooting and apart from a spare round or two in our 
direction nothing came back in return. The Hun 
was still plastering the Asylum and the avenue at 
all times of day, to our intense joy. The more he 
shelled it the more we chuckled. One felt that the 
Major had done Fritz in the eye. So we gathered 
plums and raspberries in the warm sun, rejoicing 
that the horrible smell of mustard gas was no more. 



THE WESTERN FRONT 179 

There was a fly in the ointment of course. It con- 
sisted of several thousand rounds of ammunition 
in the Asylum which we were ordered to salvage. 
The battery clerk, a corporal of astounding stout- 
heartedness who had had countless escapes by an 
inch already in the handling of it, and who sub- 
sequently became one of the best sergeants in the 
battery, undertook to go and see what could be done. 
He took with him the fitter, a lean Scot, who was 
broken-hearted because he had left a file there and 
who wanted to go and scratch about the ruins to 
try and recover it. These two disappeared into the 
Asylum during a momentary lull. Before they re- 
turned the Hun must have sent in about another 
fifteen hundred rounds, all big stuff. They came in 
hot and covered with brick dust. The fitter had 
got }iis file and showed it with joy and affection. 
The corporal had made a rough count of the rounds 
and estimated that at least a couple of hundred had 
"gone up" or were otherwise rendered useless. 

To my way of thinking it would have been man- 
slaughter to have sent teams to get the stuff away, 
so I decided to let time solve the problem and leave 
well alone. Eventually it did solve itself. Many 
weeks later another battery occupied the position 
(Poor devils. It still reeked of gas) and I had the 
pleasure of showing the Battery Commander where 
the ammunition was and handing it over. 

Meanwhile the Boche had "found" the left and 
centre sections. In addition to that the Group 
Commander conceived a passion to experiment with 
guns in the front-line trenches, to enfilade the enemy 



180 GUN FODDER 

over open sights at night and generally to put the 
fear of God into him. Who more suitable than the 
Army brigade battery commanded by that subaltern ? 

I was sent for and told all about it and sent to 
reconnoitre suitable positions. Seeing that the 
enemy had all the observation and a vast preponder- 
ance of artillery I did all in my power to dissuade 
the Commander. He had been on active service, 
however, before I was born — he told me so — and 
had forgotten more things than I should ever know. 
He had indeed forgotten them. 

The long and short of it was that I took a subal- 
tern with me and armed with compasses and trench 
maps we studied the whole zone at distances varying 
from three to five hundred yards from the enemy 
front-line trench. The best place of all happened 
to be near Battalion Headquarters. Needless to 
say the Colonel ordered me off. 

"You keep your damn things away. There's 
quite enough shelling here without your planting 
a gun. Come and have a drink." 

Eventually, however, we got two guns " planted " 
with cover for the detachments. It was an absolute 
waste of guns. The orders were to fire only if the 
enemy came over the top by day and on special 
targets by night. The difficulty of rationing them 
was extreme, it made control impossible from battery 
headquarters because the lines went half a dozen 
times a day and left me only two sections to do all 
the work with. 

The only thing they ever fired at was a very near 
balloon one afternoon. Who gave the order to fire 



THE WESTERN FRONT 181 

remains a mystery. The sergeant swore the infantry 
Colonel gave it. 

My own belief is that it was a joy shoot on the 
sergeant's part. He was heartily cursed for his 
pains, didn't hit the balloon, and within twenty-four 
hours the gun was knocked out. The area was 
liberally shelled, to the discomfort of the infantry, 
so if the Colonel did give the order, he had only 
himself to thank for the result. 

The headquarters during this time was an odd 
round brick building like a pagoda in the middle 
of a narrow orchard. A high red brick wall sur- 
rounded the orchard which ran down to the road. 
At the road edge were two houses completely 
annihilated. Plums, greengages, raspberries and 
red currants were in abundance. The signallers 
and servants were in dugouts outside the wall. 
Curiously enough, this place was not marked on the 
map. Nor did the Hun seem to have it on his 
aeroplane photographs. In any case, although he 
shelled round about I can only remember one which 
actually burst inside the walls. 

Up at Chapelle d'Armentieres the left section 
was almost unrecognisable. Five-nines had thumped 
it out of all shape, smashed down the trees, ploughed 
up the garden and scattered the houses into the 
street. The detachment spent its time day and 
night in clearing out into neighbouring ditches and 
dugouts and coming back again. They shot be- 
tween whiles, neither of the guns having been touched 
and I don't think they slept at all. None of them 
had shaved for days. 



182 GUN FODDER 

As regards casualties we were extraordinarily 
lucky. Since leaving the town not a man had been 
hit or gassed. For the transport at night I had 
reconnoitred a road which avoided the town en- 
tirely and those dangerous crossroads and took them 
right through the support line, within a quarter of 
a mile of the Boche. The road was unshelled and 
only a few machine-gun bullets spat on it from time 
to time. So they used it nightly and not a horse 
or driver was touched. 

Then the Right Group had another raid and bor- 
rowed us again. The white house and the orchard 
which we had used before were unoccupied. I de- 
cided to squeeze up a bit and get all six guns in. 
The night of the move was a colossal undertaking. 
The teams were late and the Hun chose to drop a 
gas barrage round us. More than that, in the after- 
noon I had judged my time and dodged in between 
two bombardments to visit the left section. They 
were absolutely done in, so tired that they could 
hardly keep their eyes open. The others were little 
better, having been doing all the shooting for days. 
However I ordered them to vacate the left section 
and come along to me at Battery Headquarters for 
a rest before the night's work. They dragged them- 
selves there and fell asleep in heaps in the orchard 
in the wet. The subaltern and the sergeant came 
into the building, drank a cup of tea each and filled 
the place with their snores. So I sent for another 
sergeant and suggested that he and his men who had 
had a brief rest that day should go and get the left 
section guns out while these people handled his as 



THE WESTERN FRONT 183 

best they could. He jumped at it and swore he'd 
get the guns out, begging me to keep my teams well 
to the side of the road. If he had to canter they were 
coming out and he was going to ride the lead horse 
himself, — splendid fellow. 

Then I collected the subalterns and detailed them 
for the plan of campaign. The left section man said 
he was going with his guns. So I detailed the junior 
to see the guns into the new positions and send me 
back the ammunition wagons as he emptied them. 
The third I kept with the centre section. The 
corporal clerk was to look after the headquarters. 
I was to function between the lot. 

The teams should have been up at 9 p.m. They 
didn't arrive till ten, by which time the gas hung 
about thick and people were sneezing right and left. 
Then they hung up again because of a heavy shelling 
at the corner on the way to the left section. How- 
ever they got through at last and after an endless 
wait that excellent sergeant came trotting back 
with both guns intact. We had meanwhile yanked 
out the centre section and sent them back. The 
forward guns came back all right from the trenches, 
but no ammunition wagons or G.S. returned from the 
position, although filled by us ages before and sent 
off. 

So I got on a bicycle and rode along to see what 
the trouble was. It was a poisonous road, pitch 
dark, very wet and full of shell holes. I got there 
to find a column of vehicles standing waiting all 
mixed up, jerked the bicycle into a hedge and went 
downstairs to find the subaltern. 



184 GUN FODDER 

There was the Major ! Was I pleased ? — I 
felt years younger. However this was his night off. 
I was running the show. "Carry on, Old Thing," 
said he. 

So I went out into the chaotic darkness and began 
sorting things out. Putting the subaltern in charge 
of the ammunition I took the guns. It was a hercu- 
lean task to get those six bundooks through the wet 
and spongy orchard with men who were fresh. With 
these men it was asking the impossible. But they 
did it, at the trot. 

You know the sort of thing — "Take the strain 
— together — heave ! Together — heave ! Now 
keep her going ! Once more — heave ! Together — 
heave ! and again — heave ! Easy all ! Have a 
blow — Now look here, you fellows, you must wait 
for the word and put your weight on together. Heels 
into the mud and lean on it, but lean together, all 
at the same moment, and she'll go like a baby's 
pram. Now then, come on and I'll bet you a bottle 
of bass all round that you get her going at a canter 
if only you'll heave together. — Take the strain — 
together — heave ! Ter-rot ! Canter ! Come on 
now, like that — splendid, — and you owe me a 
bottle of bass all round." 

Sounds easy, doesn't it? but oh, my God, to see 
those poor devils, dropping with fatigue, putting 
their last grunting ounce on to it, with always just 
one more heave left ! Magnificent fellows who 
worked till they dropped and then staggered up 
again, in the face of gas and five-nines, and went on 
shooting till they were dead, — they've won this war 



THE WESTERN FRONT 185 

for us if anybody has, these Tommies who don't 
know when they're beaten, these "simple soldiers" 
as the French call them, who grouse like hell but go 
on working whether the rations come up or whether 
they don't, until they're senseless from gas or stop 
a shell and get dropped into a hole in an army 
blanket. These are the men who have saved Eng- 
land and the world, these, — and not the gentlemen 
at home who make fortunes out of munitions and 
"war work" and strike for more pay, not the em- 
busqid who cannot leave England because he's 
"indispensable" to his job, not the politicians and 
vote-seekers who bolster up their parties with 
comfortable lies more dangerous than mustard 
gas, not the M.L.O.'s and R.T.O.'s and the rest of 
the alphabetic fraternity and Brass Hats who live 
in comfort in back areas doing a lot of brain work 
and filling the Staff leave boat, — not any of these, 
but the cursing, spitting, lousy Tommy, God save 
him ! 

10. 

The last of the guns was in by three o'clock in 
the morning but there wasn't a stitch of camouflage 
in the battery. However I sent every last man to 
bed, having my own ideas on the question of camou- 
flage. The subaltern and I went back to the house. 
The ammunition was also unloaded and the last 
wagon just about to depart. The servants had 
tea and sandwiches waiting, a perfect godsend. 

"What about tracks?" The Major cocked an 
eye in my direction. He was fully dressed, lying 
on his valise. I stifled a million yawns and spoke 



186 GUN FODDER 

round a sandwich. "Old Thing and I are looking 
after that when it gets light." 

"Old Thing" was the centre section commander, 
blinking like a tired owl, a far-away expression on 
his face. 

"And camouflage?" said the Major. 

"Ditto," said I. 

The servants were told to call us in an hour's 
time. I was asleep before I'd put my empty tea- 
cup on the ground. A thin grey light was creeping 
up when I was roughly shaken. I put out a boot 
and woke Old Thing. Speechless, we got up shiver- 
ing, and went out. The tracks through the orchard 
were feet deep. 

We planted irregular branches and broke up the 
wheel tracks. Over the guns was a roof of wire 
netting which I'd had put up a day previously. 
Into these we stuck trailing vine branches one by 
one, wet and cold. The Major appeared in the 
middle of the operation and silently joined forces. 
By half-past four the camouflage was complete. 
Then the Major broke the silence. 

"I'm going up to shoot 'em in," he said. 

Old Thing dosing on a gun seat woke with a start 
and stared. He hadn't been with the Major as 
long as I had. 

"D'you mind if one detachment does the whole 
thing?" said I. "They're all just about dead but 
C's got a kick left." 

The Major nodded. Old Thing staggered away, 
collected two signallers who looked like nothing 
human and woke up C sub-section. They came 



THE WESTERN FRONT 187 

one by one like silent ghosts through the orchard, 
tripping over stumps and branches, sightless with 
sleep denied. 

The Major took a signaller and went away. Old 
Thing and I checked aiming posts over the compass. 

Fifteen minutes later the O.P. rang through and 
I reported ready. 

The sun came out warm and bright and at nine 
o'clock we "stood down." Old Thing and I sup- 
ported each other into the house and fell on our 
valises with a laugh. Some one pulled off our gum 
boots. It must have been a servant but I don't 
know. I was asleep before they were off. 

The raid came off at one o'clock that night in a 
pouring rain. The gunners had been carrying 
ammunition all day after about four hours' sleep. 
Old Thing and I had one. The Major didn't have 
any. The barrage lasted an hour and a half, dur- 
ing which one sub-section made a ghastly mistake 
and shot for five full minutes on a wrong switch. 

A raid of any size is not just a matter of saying, 
"Let's go over the top to-night, and nobble a few 
of 'em! Shall us?" 

And the other fellow in the orthodox manner says, 
"Let's" — and over they go with a lot of doughty 
bombers and do a lot of dirty work. I wish it were. 

What really happens is this. First the Brigade 
Major, quite a long way back, undergoes a brain- 
storm which sends showers of typewritten sheets 
to all sorts of Adjutants who immediately talk of 
transferring to the Anti-Aircraft. Other sheets 
follow in due course, contradicting the first and giv- 



188 GUN FODDER 

ing also a long list of code words of a domestic nature 
usually, with their key. These are hotly pursued 
by maps on tracing paper, looking as though drawn 
by an imaginative child. 

At this point Group Commanders, Battalion 
Commanders, and Battery Commanders join in 
the game, taking sides. Battery Commanders walk 
miles and miles daily along duck boards, and shoot 
wire in all sorts of odd places on the enemy front 
trench and work out an exhaustive barrage. 

Then comes a booklet, which is a sort of revision 
of all that has gone before and alters the task of 
every battery. A new barrage table is worked out. 
Follows a single sheet giving zero day. 

The raiders begin cutting off their buttons and 
blacking their faces and putting oil drums in posi- 
tion. 

Battery wagon lines toil all night bringing up 
countless extra rounds. The trench mortar people 
then try to cut the real bit of wire at which the 
raiders will enter the enemy front line. As a rule 
they are unsuccessful and only provoke a furious 
retaliatory bombardment along the whole sector. 

Then Division begins to get excited and talks 
rudely to Group. Group passes it on. Next a 
field battery is ordered to cut that adjective wire 
and does. 

A Gunner officer is detailed to go over the top with 
the raid commander. He writes last letters to his 
family, drinks a last whisky, puts on all his Christ- 
mas-tree and says " Cheer o" as though going to 
his own funeral. It may be. 



THE WESTERN FRONT 189 

Then telephones buzz furiously in every brigade 
and everybody says "Carrots" in a whisper. 

You look up "Carrots" in the code book and find 
it means "raid postponed 24 hours." Everybody 
sits down and curses. 

Another paper comes round saying that the 
infantry have changed the colours of all the 
signal rockets to be used. All gunners go on 
cursing. 

Then comes the night ! Come up to the O.P. 
and have a dekko with me, but don't forget to bring 
your gas mask. 

Single file we zigzag down the communication 
trenches. The O.P. is a farmhouse, or was, in which 
the sappers have built a brick chamber just under 
the roof. You climb up a ladder to get to it and find 
room for just the signaller and ourselves with a 
long slit through which you can watch Germany. 
The Hun knows it's an O.P. He's got a similar 
one facing you, only built of concrete, and if you 
don't shell him he won't shell you. But if you do 
shell him with a futile 18-pounder H.E. or so, he 
turns on a section of five-nines and the best thing 
you can do is to report that it's "snowing", clear 
out quick and look for a new O.P. The chances 
are you won't find one that's any good. 

It's frightfully dark; can't see a yard. If you 
want to smoke for any sake don't strike matches. 
Use a tinder. See that sort of extra dark lump, 
just behind those two trees — all right, poles if you 
like. They were trees ! — Well, that's where they're 
going over. 



190 GUN FODDER 

Not a sound anywhere except the rumble of a 
battle away up north. Hell of a strafe apparently. 

Hullo ! What's the light behind that bank of 
trees ? — Fritz started a fire in his own lines ? 
Doesn't look like a fire. — It's the moon coming 
up, moon, moon, so brightly shining. Pity old 
Pelissier turned up his toes. — Ever heard the second 
verse of "Au Clair de la Lune"? 

(Singing) 

Au clair de la lune 
Pierrot repondit, 
" Je n'ai pas de plume, 
Je suis dans mon lit." 

"Si tu es done couche," 
Chuchotta Pierrette, 
"Ouvre moi ta porte 
Pour que je m'y mette." 

*Tis the moon all right, a corker too. — What do 
you make the time ? — A minute to go, eh ? Got 
your gas mask at the alert ? 

The moon came out above the trees and shed a 
cold white light on the countryside. On our side 
at least the ground was alive with men, although 
there wasn't a sound or a movement. Tree stumps, 
blasted by shell fire, stood out stark naked. The 
woods on the opposite ridge threw a deep belt of 
black shadow. The trenches were vague uneven 
lines, camouflaging themselves naturally with the 
torn ground. 

Then a mighty roar that rocked the O.P. made 
the ground tremble and set one's heart thumping 



THE WESTERN FRONT 191 

and the peaceful moonlight was defiled. Bursts 
of flame and a thick cloud of smoke broke out on 
the enemy trenches. Great red flares shot up, the 
oil drums, staining all the sky the colour of blood. 
Rifle and machine-gun fire pattered like the chatter- 
ing of a thousand monkeys as an accompaniment 
to the roaring of lions. Things zipped past or 
struck the O.P. The smoke out there was so thick 
that the pin-points of red fire made by the bursting 
shells could hardly be seen. The raiders were en- 
tirely invisible. 

Then the noise increased steadily as the German 
sky was splashed with all-coloured rockets and Verey 
lights and star shells, and their S.O.S. was answered. 
There's a gun flash ! What's the bearing ? Quick. 

— There she goes again ! — Nine-two magnetic, 
that's eighty true. Signaller ! Group. — There's 
another ! By God, that's some gun. Get it while 
I bung this through. — Hullo ! Hullo, Group ! O.P. 
speaking. Flash of enemy gun eight — degrees 
true. Another flash, a hell of a big one, what is it ? 

— One, one, two degrees. — Yes, that's correct. 
Good-bye. 

Then a mighty crash sent earth and duckboards 
spattering on to the roof of the O.P., most unpleas- 
antly near. The signaller put his mouth to my ear 
and shouted "Brigade reports gas, sir." Curse the 
gas. You can't see anything in a mask. — Don't 
smell it yet, anyhow. 

Crash again, and the O.P. rocked. Damn that 
five-nine. Was he shooting us or just searching? 
Anyhow, the line of the two bursts doesn't look 



192 GUN FODDER 

quite right for us, do you think? If it hits the 
place, there's not an earthly. Tiles begin rattling 
down off the roof most suggestively. It's a good 
twenty-foot drop down that miserable ladder. Do 
you think his line. . . . Look out ! She's coming. 
— Crash ! 

God, not more than twenty yards away ! How- 
ever we're all right. He's searching to the left of 
us. Where is the blighter ? Can you see his flash ? 
Wonder how our battery's getting on ? — 

Our people were on the protective barrage now, 
much slower. The infantry had either done their 
job or not. Anyhow they were getting back. The 
noise was distinctly tailing off. The five-nine was 
searching farther and farther behind to our left. 
The smell of gas was very faint. The smoke was 
clearing. Not a sign of life in the trenches. Our 
people had ceased fire. 

The Hun was still doing a ragged gun fire. Then 
he stopped. 

A Verey light or two went sailing over in a big 
arc. 

The moon was just a little higher, still smiling 
inscrutably. Silence, but for that sustained rumble 
up north. How many men were lying crumpled 
in that cold white light ? 

Division reported "Enemy front line was found 
to be unoccupied. On penetrating his second line 
slight resistance was encountered. One prisoner 
taken. Five of the enemy were killed in trying to 
escape. Our casualties slight." 

At the end of our barrage I called that detach- 



THE WESTERN FRONT 193 

ment up, reduced three of them to tears, and in 
awful gloom of spirit reported the catastrophe to 
the Major. He passed it on to Brigade who said 
they would investigate. 

A day later Division sent round a report of the 
"highly successful raid which from the adverse 
weather conditions owed its success to the brilliance 
of the artillery barrage. ..." 

That same morning the Colonel went to Division, 
the General was on leave. The Major was sent for 
to command the Group, and my secret hopes of the 
wagon line were dashed to the ground. I was a 
Battery Commander again in deed if not in rank. 

11. 

The wagon line all this while had, in the charge 
of the sergeant major, been cursed most bitterly 
by horse masters and A.D.V.S.'s who could not 
understand how a sergeant major aged perhaps 
thirty-nine could possibly know as much about 
horse management as a new-fledged subaltern any- 
where between nineteen and twenty-one. 

From time to time I pottered down on a bicycle 
for the purpose of strafing criminals and came away 
each time with a prayer of thanks that there was no 
new-fledged infant to interfere with the sergeant 
major's methods. 

On one occasion he begged me to wait and see an 
A.D.V.S. of sorts who was due at two o'clock that 
afternoon and who on his previous tour of inspection 
had been just about as nasty as he could be. I 
waited. 



194 GUN FODDER 

Let it be granted, as our old enemy Euclid says, 
that the horse standings were the worst in France 
— the Division of course had the decent ones — 
and that every effort was being made to repair 
them. The number of shelled houses removed 
bodily from the firing line to make brick standings 
and pathways through the mud would have built 
a model village. The horses were doing this work 
in addition to ammunition fatigues, brigade fatigues 
and every other sort of affliction. Assuming too 
that a sergeant major doesn't carry as much weight 
as a Captain (I'd got my third pip) in confronting 
an A.S.C. forage merchant with his iniquities, and 
I think every knowledgeable person admitted that 
our wagon line was as good as, if not better than, 
shall we say, any Divisional battery. Yet the 
veterinary expert (?) crabbed my very loyal sup- 
porter, the sergeant major, who worked his head 
and his hands off day in, day out. It was displeas- 
ing, — more, childish. 

In due course he arrived, — in a motor car. True 
it wasn't a Rolls Royce, but then he was only a 
Colonel. But he wore a fur coat just as if it had been 
a Rolls Royce. He stepped delicately into the mud 
and left his temper in the car. To the man who 
travels in motors a splash of mud on the boots is 
as offensive as the sight of a man smoking a pipe 
in Bond Street at eleven o'clock in the morning. It 
isn't done. 

I saluted and gave him good morning. He grunted 
and flicked a finger. Amicable relations were 
established. 



THE WESTERN FRONT 195 

"Are you in charge of these wagon lines?" said 
he. 

"In theory, yes, sir." 

He didn't quite understand and cocked a doubtful 
eye at me. 

I explained. "You see, sir, the B.C. and I are 
carrying on the war. He's commanding Group 
and I'm commanding the battery. But we've got 
the fullest confidence in the sergeant maj. — " 

Was it an oath he swallowed? Anyhow, it went 
down like an oyster. 

The Colonel moved, thus expressing his desire 
to look round. 

I fell into step. 

"Have you got a hay sieve?" said he. 

" Sergeant Major, where's the hay sieve ? " said I. 

"This way, sir," said the sergeant major. 

Two drivers were busily passing hay through it. 
The Colonel told them how to do it. 

"Have you got wire hay racks above the horses ?" 

"Sergeant Major," said I, "have we got wire hay 
racks?" 

"This way, sir," said the sergeant major. 

Two drivers were stretching pieces of bale wire 
from pole to pole. 

The Colonel asked them if they knew how to do it. 

"How many horses have you got for casting?" 
said the Colonel. 

"Do we want to cast any horses, Sergeant Major ? " 
said I. 

"Yes, sir," said the sergeant major. "We've 
got six." 



196 GUN FODDER 

It was a delightful morning. Every question that 
the Colonel asked I passed on to the sergeant major, 
whose answer was ever ready. Wherever the Colonel 
wished to explore, there were men working. 

Could a new-fledged infant unversed in the ways 
of the Army have accomplished it ? 

One of the sections was down the road quite five 
minutes away. During the walk we exchanged 
views about the war. He confided to me that the 
ideal was to have in each wagon line an officer who 
knew no more about gunnery than that turnip but 
who knew enough about horses to take advice from 
veterinary officers. 

In return I told him that there ought not to be 
any wagon lines, that the horse was effete in a war 
of this nature, that over half the man-power of the 
country was employed in grooming and cleaning 
harness, half the tonnage of the shipping taken up 
in fetching forage and that there was more strafing 
over a bad turn-out than if a battery had shot its 
own infantry for four days running. 

The outcome of it all was pure farce. He inspected 
the remaining section and then told me he was 
immensely pleased with the marked improvement 
in the condition of the animals and the horse manage- 
ment generally (nothing had been altered) and 
that if I found myself short of labour when it came 
to building a new wagon line he thought he knew 
where he could put his hand on a dozen useful men. 
Furthermore he was going to write and tell my 
Colonel how pleased he was. 

The sergeant major's face was a study ! 



THE WESTERN FRONT 197 

The psychology of it is presumably the same 
that brings promotion to the officer who, smartly 
and with well polished buttons, in reply to a question 
from the General, "What colour is black?" whips 
out like a flash, "White, sir !" 

And the General nods and says, "Of course! — 
Smart young officer that ! What's his name?'* 

Infallible ! 

n. 

It is difficult to mark the exact beginnings of 
mental attitudes when time out there is one long 
action of nights and days without names. One 
keeps the date, because of the orders issued. For 
the rest it is all one. One can only trace points 
of view, feelings, call them what you will, as dating 
before or after certain outstanding events. Thus 
I had no idea of war until the gas bombardment in 
Armentieres, no idea that human nature could go 
through such experiences and emotions and remain 
sane. So once in action I had not bothered to find 
the reason of it all, contenting myself merely with 
the profound conviction that the world was mad, 
that it was against human nature, — but that to- 
morrow we should want a full echelon of ammuni- 
tion. Even the times when one had seen death 
only gave one a momentary shock. One such inci- 
dent will never leave me but I cannot feel now any- 
thing of the horror I experienced at the moment. 

It was at lunch one day before we had left the 
chateau. A trickle of sun filtered down into the 
cellar where the Major, one other subaltern and 



198 GUN FODDER 

myself were lunching off bully beef and ration pickles. 
Every now and again an H.E. shell exploded outside 
in the road along which infantry were constantly 
passing. One burst was followed by piercing 
screams. My heart gave a leap and I sprang for 
the stairs and out. Across the way lay three bodies, 
a great purple stain on the pavement, the mark of 
a direct hit on the wall against which one was hud- 
dled. I ran across. Their eyes were glassy, their 
faces black. Grey fingers curled upwards from a 
hand that lay back down. Then the screams came 
again from the corner house. I dashed in. Our 
corporal signaller was trying to bandage a man 
whose right leg was smashed and torn open, blood 
and loose flesh everywhere. He lay on his back, 
screaming. Other screams came from round the 
corner. I went out again and down the passage 
saw a man, his hands to his face, swaying back- 
wards and forwards. 

I ran to him. "Are you hit?" 

He fell on to me. "My foot! Oh, my foot! 
Christ!" 

Another officer, from the howitzer battery, came 
running. We formed a bandy chair and began to 
carry him up towards the road. 

" Don't take me up there," he blubbered. " Don't 
take me there !" 

We had to. It was the only way, to step over 
those three black-faced corpses and into that house 
where there was water and bandages. There was 
a padre there now and another man. I left them 
and returned to the cellar to telephone for an am- 



THE WESTERN FRONT 199 

bulance. I was cold, sick. But they weren't our 
dead. They weren't our gunners with whose faces 
one was familiar, who were part of our daily life. 
The feeling passed and I was able to go on with the 
bully beef and pickles and the war. 

During the weeks that followed the last raid I 
was to learn differently. They were harassing weeks 
with guns dotted all over the zone. The luck seemed 
to have turned and it was next to impossible to find 
a place for a gun which the Hun didn't immediately 
shell violently. Every gun had of course a different 
pin-point and map work became a labour, map work 
and the difficulty of battery control and rationing. 
One's brain was keyed incessantly up to concert 
pitch. 

Various changes had taken place. We had been 
taken into Right Group and headquarters was 
established in a practically unshelled farm with 
one section beside it. Another section was right 
forward in the Brickstack. The third was away on 
the other side of the zone, an enfilade section which 
I handed over, lock, stock and barrel, to the section 
commander who had his own O.P. in Moat Farm 
and took on his own targets. We were all extremely 
happy, doing a lot of shooting. 

One morning, hot and sunny, I had to meet the 
Major to reconnoitre an alternative gun position. 
So I sent for the enfilade section commander to come 
and take charge and set out in shorts and shirt 
sleeves on a bicycle. The Major, another Head- 
quarters officer and myself had finished reconnoitring 
and were eating plums, when a heavy bombardment 



200 GUN FODDER 

began in the direction of the battery farm. Five- 
nines they were in section salvos and the earth went 
up in spouts, not on the farm but mighty close. I 
didn't feel anxious at first, for that subaltern had 
been in charge of the Chapelle section and knew all 
about clearing out. But the bombardment went 
on. The Major and the other left me, advising me 
to "give it a chance" before I went back. 

So I rode along to an O.P. and tried to get through 
to the battery on the 'phone. The line was gone. 

Through glasses I could see no signs of life round 
about the farm. They must have cleared, I thought. 
However, I had to get back some time or other, so 
I rode slowly back along the road. A track led 
between open fields to the farm. I walked the 
bicycle along this until bits of shell began flying. 
I lay flat. Then the bombardment slackened. I 
got up and walked on. Again they opened, so I 
lay flat again. 

For perhaps half an hour bits came zooming like 
great stagbeetles all round, while I lay and watched. 

They were on the gun position, not the farm, but 
somehow my anxiety wouldn't go. After all I was 
in charge of the battery and here I was, while God 
knew what might have happened in the farm. So 
I decided to make a dash for it and timed the bursts. 
At the end of five minutes they slackened and I 
thought I could do it. Two more crashed. I 
jumped on the bike, pedalled hard down the track 
until it was blotted out by an enormous shell hole 
into which I went, left the bike lying and ran to the 
farm gate just as two pip-squeaks burst in the yard. 



THE WESTERN FRONT 201 

I fell into the door, covered with brick dust and 
tiles but unhurt. 

The sound of singing came from the cellar. I 
called down "Who's there?" The servants and 
the corporal clerk were there. And the officer ? 
Oh, he'd gone over to the guns to see if everybody 
had cleared the position. He'd given the order 
as soon as the bombardment began. But over at 
the guns the place was being chewed up. 

Had he gone alone? No. One of the servants 
had gone with him. How long ago ? Perhaps 
twenty minutes. Meanwhile during question and 
answer four more pip-squeaks had landed, two at 
the farm gate, one in the yard, one just over. 

It was getting altogether too hot. I decided to 
clear the farm first. Two at a time, taking the 
word from me, they made a dash for it through the 
garden and the hedge to a flank, till only the corporal 
clerk and myself were left. We gathered the secret 
papers, the "wind gadget", my compass and the 
telephone and ran for it in our turn. 

We caught the others who were waiting round the 
corner well to a flank. I handed the things we'd 
brought to the mess cook and asked the corporal 
clerk if he'd come with me to make sure that the 
subaltern and the gunners had got away all right. 

We went wide and got round to the rear of the 
position. Not a sign of any of the detachments 
in any houses round about. Then we worked our 
way up a hedge which led to the rear of the guns, 
dropping flat for shells to burst. They were more 
on the farm now than the guns. We reached the 



202 GUN FODDER 

signal pit, — a sort of dugout with a roof of pit 
props and earth and a trench dug to the entrance. 

The corporal went along the trench. "Christ!" 
he said and came blindly back. 

For an instant the world spun. Without seeing 
I saw. Then I climbed along the broken trench. 
A five-nine had landed on the roof of the pit and 
crashed everything in. 

A pair of boots was sticking out of the earth. — 

He had been in charge of the battery for me. 
From the safety of the cellar he had gone out to 
see if the men were all right. He had done my 
job! 

Gunners came with shovels. In five minutes 
we had him out. He was still warm. The doctor 
was on his way. We carried him out of the shelling 
on a duck board. Some of the gunners went on 
digging for the other boy. The doctor was there 
by the time we'd carried him to the road. He was 
dead. 

13. 

A pair of boots sticking out of the earth. 

For days I saw nothing else. That jolly fellow 
whom I'd left laughing, sitting down to write a 
letter to his wife, — a pair of boots sticking out. 
Why? Why? 

We had laid him in a cottage. The sergeant and 
I went back and by the light of a candle which flick- 
ered horribly, emptied his pockets and took off his 
ring. How cold Death was. It made him look 
ten years younger. 

Then we put him into an army blanket with his 



THE WESTERN FRONT 203 

boots on and all his clothes. The only string we 
had was knotted. It took a long time to untie it. 
At last it was done. 

A cigarette holder, a penknife, a handkerchief, 
the ring. I took them out with me into the moon- 
light, all that King and country had left of him. 

What had this youngster been born for, sent to a 
Public School, earned his own living and married 
the pretty girl whose photo I had seen in the dugout ? 
To die like a rat in a trap, to have his name one day 
in the Roll of Honour and so break two hearts, and 
then be forgotten by his country because he was 
no more use to it. What was the worth of Public 
School education if it gave the country no higher 
ideal than war ? — to kill or be killed. Were there 
no brains in England big enough to avert it? He 
hadn't wanted it. He was a representative speci- 
men. What had he joined for? Because all his 
pals had. He didn't want them to call him coward. 
For that he had left his wife and his home, and 
to-morrow he would be dropped into a hole in the 
ground and a parson would utter words about God 
and eternal life. 

What did it all mean ? Why, because it was the 
"thing to do", did we all join up like sheep in a 
Chicago packing yard? What right had our coun- 
try — the "free country" — to compel us to live 
this life of filth and agony ? 

The men who made the law that sent us out, they 
didn't come too. They were the "rudder of the 
nation", steering the "Ship of State." They'd 
never seen a pair of boots sticking out of the earth. 



204 GUN FODDER 

Why did we bow the neck and obey other men's 
wills ? 

Surely these conscientious objectors had a greater 
courage in withstanding our ridicule than we in 
wishing to prove our possession of courage by com- 
ing out. What was the root of this war, — honour ? 
How can honour be at the root of dishonour, and 
wholesale manslaughter? What kind of honour 
was it that smashed up homesteads, raped women, 
crucified soldiers, bombed hospitals, bayoneted 
wounded? What idealism was ours if we took an 
eye for an eye? What was our civilisation, twenty 
centuries of it, if we hadn't reached even to the 
barbaric standards, — for no barbarian could have 
invented these atrocities. What was the festering 
pit on which our social system was built ? 

And the parson who talked of God, — is there 
more than one God, then, for the Germans quoted 
him as being on their side with as much fervour 
and sincerity as the parson? How reconcile any 
God with this devastation and deliberate killing? 
This war was the proof of the failure of Christ, the 
proof of our own failure, the failure of the civilised 
world. For twenty centuries the world had turned 
a blind eye to the foulness stirring inside it, insinu- 
ating itself into the main arteries ; and now the lid 
was wrenched off and all the foul stench of a humbug 
Christian civilisation floated over the poisoned world. 

One man had said he was too proud to fight. 
We, filled with the lust of slaughter, jeered him as we 
had jeered the conscientious objectors. But wasn't 
there in our hearts, in saner moments, a respect 



THE WESTERN FRONT 205 

which we were ashamed to admit, — because we 
in our turn would have been jeered at? Therein 
lay our cowardice. Death we faced daily, hourly, 
with a laugh. But the ridicule of our fellow cowards, 
that was worse than death. And yet in our knowl- 
edge we cried aloud for Peace, who in our ignorance 
had cried for War. Children of impulse satiated 
with new toys and calling for the old ones ! We 
would set back the clock and in our helplessness 
called upon the Christ whom we had crucified. 

And back at home the law-makers and the old 
men shouted patriotically from their club fenders, 
"We will fight to the last man!" 

The utter waste of the brown-blanketed bundle 
in the cottage room ! 

What would I not have given for the one woman 
to put her arms round me and hide my face against 
her breast and let me sob out all the bitterness in 
my heart ? 

14. 

From that moment I became a conscientious 
objector, a pacifist, a most bitter hater of the Boche 
whose hand it was that had wrenched the lid off 
the European cesspit. Illogical? If you like, but 
what is logic? Logically the war was justified. 
We crucified Christ logically and would do so again. 

From that moment my mind turned and twisted 
like a compass needle that had lost its sense of the 
north. The days were an endless burden blackened 
by the shadow of death, filled with emptiness, bitter- 
ness and despair. 

The day's work went on as if nothing had hap- 



206 GUN FODDER 

pened. A new face took his place at the mess table, 
the routine was exactly the same. Only a rough 
wooden cross showed that he had ever been with 
us. And all the time we went on shooting, killing 
just as good fellows as he, perhaps, doing our best 
to do so at least. Was it honest, thinking as I did ? 
Is it honest for a convict who doesn't believe in 
prisons to go on serving his time? There was 
nothing to be done but go on shooting and try to 
forget. 

But war isn't like that. It doesn't let you for- 
get. It gives you a few days, or weeks, and then 
takes some one else. "Old Thing" was the next, 
in the middle of a shoot in a front line O.P. 

I was lying on my bed playing with a tiny kitten 
while the third subaltern at the 'phone passed on 
the corrections to the battery. Suddenly, instead 
of saying "Five minutes more right," he said, 
"What's that? — Badly wounded?" and the line 
went. 

I was on the 'phone in a flash, calling up battalion 
for stretcher bearers and doctors. 

They brought me his small change and pencil- 
ends and pocketbook, — and the kitten came climb- 
ing up my leg. 

The Major came back from leave — which he 
had got on the Colonel's return — in time to attend 
Old Thing's funeral with the Colonel and myself. 
Outside the cemetery a football match was going 
on all the time. They didn't stop their game. 
Why should they ? They were too used to funerals, 
— and it might be their turn in a day or two. 



THE WESTERN FRONT 207 

Thanks to the Major my leave came through 
within a week. It was like the answer to a prayer. 
At any price I wanted to get away from the re- 
sponsibility, away from the sight of khaki, away 
from everything to do with war. 

London was too full of it, of immaculate men and 
filmy girls who giggled. I couldn't face that. 

I went straight down to the little house among 
the beeches and pines, — an uneasy guest of long 
silences, staring into the fire, of bursts of violent 
argument, of rebellion against all existing institu- 
tions. 

But it was good to watch the river flowing by, to 
hear it lapping against the white yacht, to hear 
the echo of rowlocks, flung back by the beech woods, 
and the wonderful whir ! whir ! whir ! of swans as 
they flew down and down and away; to see little 
cottages with wisps of blue smoke against the brown 
and purple of the distant woods, not lonely ruins 
and sticks ; to see the feathery green moss and the 
watery rays of a furtive sun through the pines, not 
smashed and torn by shells ; at night to watch the 
friendly lights in the curtained windows and hear 
the owls hooting to each other unafraid and let the 
rest and peace sink into one's soul ; to shirk even 
the responsibility of deciding whether one should 
go for a walk or out in the dingy, or stay indoors, 
but just to agree to anything that was suggested. 

To decide anything was for out there, not here 
where war did not enter in. 

Fifteen dream days, like a sudden strong whiff 
of verbena or honeysuckle coming out of an envelope. 



208 GUN FODDER 

For the moment one shuts one's eyes, — and opens 
them again to find it isn't true. The sound of guns 
is everywhere. 

So with that leave. I found myself in France 
again, trotting up in the mud and rain to report my 
arrival as though I'd never been away. It was all 
just a dream to try and call back. 

15. 

Everything was well with the battery. My job 
was to function with all speed at the building 
of the new horse lines. Before going on leave 
I had drawn a map to scale of the field in which 
they were to be. This had been submitted to 
Corps and approved and work had started on 
it during my leave. 

My kit followed me and I installed myself in a 
small canvas hut with the acting-Captain of another 
of our batteries whose lines were belly deep in the 
next field. He had succeeded Pip Don who went 
home gassed after the Armentieres shelling and who, 
on recovering, had been sent out to Mesopotamia. 

The work was being handled under rather adverse 
conditions. Some of the men were from our own 
battery, others from the Brigade Ammunition Col- 
umn, more from a Labour Company, and there was 
a full-blown Sapper private doing the scientific 
part. They were all at loggerheads; none of the 
N.C.O.'s would take orders from the Sapper private, 
and the Labour Company worked Trades Union 
hours, although dressed in khaki and calling them- 
selves soldiers. The subaltern in charge was on 



THE WESTERN FRONT 209 

the verge of putting every one of them under arrest, 
— not a bad idea, but what about the standings? 

By the time I'd had a look round tea was ready. 
At least there seemed to be plenty of material. 

At seven next morning I was out. No one else 
was. So I took another look round, did a little 
thinking, and came and had breakfast. By nine 
o'clock there seemed to be a lot of cigarette smoke 
in the direction of the works. 

I began functioning. My servant summoned 
all the heads of departments and they appeared 
before me in a sullen row. At my suggestion tongues 
wagged freely for about half an hour. I addressed 
them in their own language and then, metaphorically 
speaking, we shook hands all round, sang hymn 
number 44, and standings suddenly began to spring 
up like mushrooms. 

It was really extraordinary how those fellows 
worked once they'd got the hang of the thing. It 
left me free to go joy-riding with my stable compan- 
ion in the afternoons. We carried mackintoshes on 
the saddle and scoured the country, splashing into 
Bailleul — it was odd to revisit the scene of my 
trooper days after three years — for gramophone 
records, smokes, stomachic delicacies and books. 
We also sunk a lot of francs in a series of highly 
artistic picture post cards which, pinned all round 
the hut at eye level, were a constant source of 
admiration and delight to the servants and fur- 
nished us with a splash of colour which at least 
broke the monotony of khaki canvas. These 
were — it goes without saying — supplemented 



210 GUN FODDER 

from time to time with the more reticent efforts 
of La Vie Parisienne. 

All things being equal we were extremely com- 
fortable, and, although the stove was full of sur- 
prises, quite sufficiently frowzy during the long 
evenings, which were filled with argument, inven- 
tion, music and much tobacco. The invention part 
of the programme was supplied by my stable com- 
panion who had his own theories concerning acety- 
lene lamps, and who, with the aid of a couple of 
shell cases and a little carbide nearly wrecked the 
happy home. Inventions were therefore suppressed. 

They were tranquil days in which we built not 
only book shelves, stoves and horse standings but 
a great friendship, — ended only by his death on 
the battlefield. He was all for the gun line and its 
greater strenuousness. 

As for me, then at least, I was content to lie 
fallow. I had seen too much of the guns, thanked 
God for the opportimity of doing something utterly 
different for a time and tried to conduct a mental 
spring-clean and rearrangement. As a means to 
this I found myself putting ideas on paper in verse 
— a thing I'd never done in all my life — bad stuff 
but horribly real. One's mind was tied to war, like 
a horse on a picketing rope, and could only go round 
and round in a narrow circle. To break away was 
impossible. One was saturated with it as the 
country was with blood. Every cog in the ma- 
chinery of war was like a magnet which held one 
in spite of all one's struggles, giddy with the noise, 
dazed by its enormity, nauseated by its results. 



THE WESTERN FRONT 211 

The work provided one with a certain amount 
of comic relief. Timber ran short and it seemed as 
if the standings would be denied completion. Stones, 
gravel and cinders had been already a difficulty, 
settled only by much importuning. Bricks had 
been brought from the gun line. But asking for 
timber was like trying to steal the chair from under 
the General. I went to Division and was promptly 
referred to Corps who were handling the job. Corps 
said, "You've had all that's allowed in the R.E. 
handbook. Good morning." I explained that I 
wanted it for wind screens. They smiled politely 
and suggested my getting some ladies' fans from 
any deserted village. On returning to Division 
they said, "If Corps can't help you, how the devil 
can you expect us to?" 

I went to Army. They looked me over and asked 
me where I came from and who I was, and what 
I was doing, and what for and on what authority, 
and why I came to them instead of going to Division 
and Corps? To all of which I replied patiently. 
Their ultimate answer was a smile of regret. There 
wasn't any in the country, they said. 

So I prevailed upon my brother who, as War 
Correspondent, ran a big car and no questions 
asked about petrol, to come over and lunch with 
me. To him I put the case and was immedi- 
ately whisked off to O.C. Forests, the Timber King. 
At the lift of his little finger down came thousands 
of great oaks. Surely a few branches were going 
begging ? 

He heard my story with interest. His answer 



212 GUN FODDER 

threw beams of light. "Why the devil don't Divi- 
sion and Corps and all the rest of them ask for it 
if they want it? I've got tons of stuff here. How 
much do you want?" 

I told him the cubic stature of the standings. 

He jotted abstruse calculations for a moment. 
"Twenty tons," said he. "Are you anywhere near 
the river?" 

The river flowed at the bottom of the lines. 

"Right. I'll send you a barge. To-day's Monday. 
Should be with you by Wednesday. Name ? Unit ? " 

He ought to have been commanding an army, 
that man. 

We lunched most triumphantly in Hazebrouck, 
had tea and dinner at Cassel and I was dropped on 
my own doorstep well before midnight. 

It was not unpleasing to let drop, quite casually 
of course, to Division and Corps and Army, that 
twenty tons of timber were being delivered at my 
lines in three days and that there was more where 
that came from. If they wanted any, they had 
only to come and ask me about it. 

16. 

During this period the Major had handed over 
the eighteen-pounders, receiving 4.5 howitzers in 
exchange, nice little cannons, but apparently in 
perpetual need of calibration. None of the gunners 
had ever handled them before but they picked up 
the new drill with extraordinary aptitude, taking 
the most unholy delight in firing gas shells. They 
hadn't forgotten Armentieres either. 



THE WESTERN FRONT 213 

My wagon line repose was roughly broken into 
by an order one afternoon to come up immediately. 
The Colonel was elsewhere and the Major had taken 
his place once more. 

Furthermore, a raid was to take place the same 
night and I hadn't the foggiest idea of the number- 
less 4.5 differences. However we did our share 
in the raid and at the end of a couple of days I began 
to hope we should stick to howitzers. The reasons 
were many, — a bigger shell with more satisfactory 
results, gas as well as H.E., four guns to control 
instead of six, far greater ease in finding positions 
and a longer range. This was in October, '17. 
Things have changed since then. The air recuper- 
ator with the new range drum and fuze indicator 
have made the 18-pounder a new thing. 

Two days after my going up the Hun found us. 
Between 11 a.m. and 4 p.m. he sent over three hun- 
dred five-nines, but as they fell between two of the 
guns and the billet, and he didn't bother to switch, 
we were perfectly happy. To my way of thinking 
his lack of imagination in gunnery is one of the 
factors which has helped him to lose the war. He is 
consistent, amazingly thorough and amazingly accu- 
rate. We have those qualities too, not quite so 
marked perhaps, but it is the added touch of imagi- 
nation, of sportingness, which has beaten him. 
What English subaltern for instance up in that 
Hun O.P. wouldn't have given her five minutes 
more right for luck, — and got the farm and the 
gun and the ammunition? But because the Boche 
had been allotted a definite target and a definite 



214 GUN FODDER 

number of rounds he just went on according to orders 
and never thought of budging off his line. We all 
knew it and remained in the farm although the 
M.P.I, was only fifty yards to a flank. 

The morning after the raid I went the round of 
the guns. One of them had a loose breechblock. 
When fired the back flash was right across the gun 
pit. I put the gun out of action, the chances being 
that very soon she would blow out her breech and 
kill every man in the detachment. 

As my knowledge was limited to eighteen-pound- 
ers, however, I sent for the brigade artificer. His 
opinion confirmed mine. 

That night she went down on the tail of a 
wagon. The next night she came back again, 
the breech just as loose. Nothing had been 
done. The Ordnance workshop sent a chit with 
her to say she'd got to fire so many hundred 
more rounds at 4th charge before she could be 
condemned. 

What was the idea? Surely to God the Hun 
killed enough gunners without our trying to kill 
them ourselves? Assuming that a 4.5 cost fifteen 
hundred pounds in round figures, four gunners and a 
sergeant at an average of two shillings a day were 
worth economising, to say nothing of the fact that 
they were all trained men and experienced soldiers, 
or to mention that they were human beings with 
wives and families. It cannot have been the diffi- 
culty of getting another gun. The country was 
stiff with guns and it only takes a busy day to fire 
four hundred rounds. 



THE WESTERN FRONT 215 

It was just the good old system again ! I left the 
gun out of action. 

Within a couple of days we had to hand over 
again. We were leaving that front to go up into 
the salient, Ypres. But I didn't forget to tell the 
in-coming Battery Commander all about that 
particular gun. 

Ypres ! One mentions it quite casually but I 
don't think there was an officer or man who didn't 
draw a deep breath when the order came. It was a 
death trap. 

There was a month's course of gunnery in England 
about to take place, — the Overseas Course for 
Battery Commanders. My name had been sent 
in. It was at once cancelled so that the Ypres move 
was a double disappointment. 

So the battery went down to the wagon line and 
prepared for the worst. For a couple of days we 
hung about uneasily. Then the Major departed 
for the north in a motor lorry to take over positions. 
Having seen him off we foregathered with the officers 
of the Brigade Ammunition Column, cursed with 
uneasy laughter and turned the rum-specialist on 
to brewing flaming toddy. 

The next day brought a telegram from the Major 
of which two words at least will never die : "Move 
cancelled." 

We had dinner in Estaires that night ! 

But the brigade was going to move, although 
none of us knew where. The day before they took 
the road I left for England in a hurry to attend the 
Overseas Course. How little did I guess what 



216 GUN FODDER 

changes were destined to take place before I saw 
them again ! 

17. 

The course was a godsend in that it broke the 
back of the winter. A month in England, sleeping 
between sheets, with a hot bath every day and 
brief week-ends with one's people was a distinct 
improvement on France, although the first half of 
the course was dull to desperation. The chief 
interest, in fact, of the whole course was to see the 
fight between the two schools of gunners, — the 
theoretical and the practical. Shoebury was the 
home of the theoretical. We filled all the West- 
cliff hotels and went in daily by train to the school 
of gunnery, there to imbibe drafts of statistics — 
not excluding our old friend T.O.B. — and to relearn 
all the stuff we had been doing every day in France 
in face of the Hun, a sort of revised up-to-date ver- 
sion, including witty remarks at the expense of 
Salisbury which left one with the idea, "Well, if 
this is the last word of the School of Gunnery, I'm 
a damned sight better gunner than I thought I 
was." 

Many of the officers had brought their wives 
down. Apart from them the hotels were filled with 
indescribable people, — dear old ladies in eighteenth- 
century garments who knitted and talked scandal 
and allowed their giggling daughters to flirt and 
dance with all and sundry. One or two of the more 
advanced damsels had left their parents behind 
and were staying there with "uncles", — rather 



THE WESTERN FRONT 217 

lascivious-looking old men, rapidly going bald. 
Where they all came from is a mystery. One didn't 
think England contained such people, and the 
thought that one was fighting for them was intol- 
erable. 

After a written examination which was somewhat 
of a farce at the end of the first fortnight, we all 
trooped down to Salisbury to see the proof of the 
pudding in the shooting. Shoebury was routed. 
A couple of hundred bursting shells duly corrected 
for temperature, barometer, wind and the various 
other disabilities attaching to exterior ballistics 
will disprove the most likely-sounding theory. 

Salisbury said, "Of course they will tell you this 
at Shoebury. They may be perfectly right. I 
don't deny it for a moment, but I'll show you what 
the ruddy bundook says about it." And at the end 
of half an hour's shooting the "ruddy bundook" 
behind us had entirely disposed of the argument. 
We had calibrated that unfortunate battery to within 
half a foot a second, fired it with a field clinometer, 
put it through its paces in snowstorms and every 
kind of filthy weather and went away impressed. 
The gun does not lie. Salisbury won hands down. 

The verdict of the respective schools upon my work 
was amusing and showed that at least they had 
fathomed the psychology of me. 

Shoebury said, "Fair. A good second in com- 
mand." Salisbury said, "Sound, practical work. 
A good Battery Commander." 

Meanwhile the papers every day had been ring- 
ing with the Cambrai show. November, '17, was 



218 GUN FODDER 

a memorable month for many others besides the 
Brigade. Of course I didn't know for certain that 
we were in it, but it wasn't a very difficult guess. 
The news became more and more anxious reading, 
especially when I received a letter from the Major 
who said laconically that he had lost all his kit; 
would I please collect some more that he had ordered 
and bring it out with me ? 

This was countermanded by a telegram saying 
he was coming home on leave. I met him in Lon- 
don and in the luxury of the Carlton Grill he told 
me the amazing story of Cambrai. 

The net result to the Brigade was the loss of the 
guns and many officers and men, and the acquiring 
of one D.S.O. which should have been a V.C., and 
a handful of M.C.'s, Military Medals, and Croix 
de Guerre. 

I found them sitting down, very merry and bright, 
at a place called Poix in the Lines of Communica- 
tion, and there I listened to stories of Huns shot 
with rifles at one yard, of days in trenches fighting 
as infantry, of barrages that passed conception, of 
the amazing feats of my own Major who was the 
only officer who got nothing out of it, — through 
some gross miscarriage of justice and to my help- 
less fury. 

There was a new Captain commanding my bat- 
tery in the absence of the Major. But I was 
informed that I had been promoted Major and was 
taking over another battery whose commander 
had been wounded in the recent show. Somehow 
it had happened that that battery and ours had 



THE WESTERN FRONT 219 

always worked together, had almost always played 
each other in the finals of brigade football matches 
and there was as a result a strong liking between 
the two. It was good therefore to have the luck 
to go to them instead of one of the others. It 
completed the entente between the two of us. 

Only the Brigade Headquarters was in Poix. 
The batteries and the Ammunition Column had a 
village each in the neighbourhood. My new bat- 
tery, my first command, was at Bergicourt, some 
three miles away, and thither I went in the brigade 
trap, a little shy and overwhelmed at this entirely 
unexpected promotion, not quite sure of my recep- 
tion. The Captain was an older man than I and 
he and some of the subalterns had all been lieu- 
tenants together with me in the Heytesbury days. 

From the moment of getting out of the trap, as 
midday stables was being dismissed, the Captain's 
loyalty to me was of the most exceptional kind. 
He did everything in his power to help me the whole 
time I remained in command and I owe him more 
gratitude and thanks than I can ever hope to repay. 
The subalterns too worked like niggers, and I was 
immensely proud of being in command of such a 
splendid fighting battery. 

Bergicourt was a picturesque little place that 
had sprung up in a hillside cup. A tiny river ran 
at the bottom of the hill, the cottages were dotted 
with charming irregularity up and down its flank 
and the surrounding woody hills protected it a 
little from the biting winter winds. The men and 
horses were billeted among the cottages. The 



220 GUN FODDER 

battery office was in the Mairie, and the mess was 
in the presbytery. The Abbe was a diminutive, 
round-faced, blue-chinned little man with a black 
skull cap, whose simplicity was altogether excep- 
tional. He had once been on a Cook's tour to 
Greece, Egypt and Italy but for all the knowledge 
of the world he got from it he might as well have 
remained in Bergicourt. He shaved on Sundays 
and insinuated himself humbly into the mess room 
— his best parlour — with an invariable " Bon jour, 
mon commandant!" and a "je vous remerc — ie," 
that became the passwords of the battery. The 
S sound in remercie lasted a full minute to a sort of 
splashing accompaniment emerging from the teeth. 
We used to invite him in to coffee and liqueurs after 
dinner and his round-eyed amazement when the 
Captain and one of the subalterns did elementary 
conjuring tricks, producing cards from the least 
expected portions of his anatomy and so on as he 
sat there in front of the fire with a drink in his 
hand and a cigarette smouldering in his fingers, 
used to send us into helpless shrieks of laughter. 

He bestowed on me in official moments the most 
wonderful title that even Haig might have been 
proud of. He called me "Monsieur le Commandant 
des armees anglaises a Bergicourt," — a First Com- 
mand indeed ! 

Christmas Day was a foot deep in snow, wonder- 
fully beautiful and silent with an almost uncanny 
stillness. The Colonel and the Intelligence Officer 
came and had dinner with us in the middle of the 
day, after the Colonel had made a little speech to 



THE WESTERN FRONT 221 

the men, who were sitting down to theirs, and been 
cheered to the echo. 

At night there was a concert and the battery got 
royally tight. It was the first time they'd been 
out of action for eight months and it probably did 
them a power of good. 

Four Christmases back I had been in Florida 
splashing about in the sea, revelling in being care 
free, deep in the writing of a novel. It was amazing 
how much water had flowed under the bridges 
since then, — one in Fontainehouck, one in Salonica, 
one in London, and now this one at Bergicourt with 
six guns and a couple of hundred men under me. I 
wondered where the next would be and thought of 
New York with a sigh. If any one had told me in 
Florida that I should ever be a Major in the British 
Army I should have thought he'd gone mad. 

18. 

The time was spent in Poix in completing our- 
selves with all the things of which the batteries 
were short — technical stores — in making rings 
in the snow and exercising the horses, in trying to 
get frost nails without success, in a comic chasse au 
sanglier organised by a local sportsman in which 
we saw nothing but a big red fox and a hare and 
bagged neither, in endeavouring to camouflage the 
fuel stolen by the men, in wondering what 1918 
would bring forth. 

The bitter cold lasted day after day without any 
sign of a break and in the middle of it came the order 
to move. We were wanted back in the line again. 



222 GUN FODDER 

I suppose there is always one second of appre- 
hension on receiving that order, of looking round 
with the thought, "Whose turn this time?" There 
seemed to be no hope or sign of peace. The very 
idea was so remote as to be stillborn. Almost it 
seemed as if one would have to go on and on for 
ever. The machine had run away with us and 
there was no stopping it. Every calendar that 
ran out was another year of one's youth burnt 
on the altar of war. There was no future. How 
could there be when men were falling like leaves in 
autumn ? 

One put up a notice board on the edge of the future. 
It said, "Trespassers will be pip-squeaked." The 
present was the antithesis of everything one had 
ever dreamed, a ghastly slavery to be borne as best 
one could. One sought distractions to stop one's 
thinking. Work was insufficient. One developed 
a literary gluttony, devouring cannibalistically all 
the fiction writers, the war poets, everything that 
one could lay hands on, developing unconsciously 
a higher criticism, judging by the new standards 
set by three years of war — that school of post- 
impressionism that rubs out so ruthlessly the essen- 
tial, leaving the unessential crowing on its dunghill. 
It only left one the past as a mental playground 
and even there the values had altered. One looked 
back with a very different eye from that with which 
one had looked forward only four years ago. One 
had seen Death now and heard Fear whispering, 
and felt the pulse of a world upheaved by passions. 

The war itself had taken on a different aspect. 



THE WESTERN FRONT 223 

The period of peace sectors was over. Russia had 
had enough. Any day now would see the released 
German divisions back on the western front. It 
seemed that the new year must inevitably be one 
of cataclysmic events. It was not so much "can 
we attack?" as "will they break through?" And 
yet trench warfare had been a stalemate for so long 
that it didn't seem possible that they could. But 
whatever happened it was not going to be a joy-ride. 

We were going to another army. That at least 
was a point of interest. The batteries, being scat- 
tered over half a dozen miles of country, were to 
march independently to their destinations. So 
upon the appointed day we packed up and said 
good-bye to the little priest and interviewed the 
mayor and haggled over exorbitant claims for 
damages and impossible thefts of wood and potatoes, 
wondering all the while how the horses would ever 
stand up on the frozen roads without a single frost 
nail in the battery. It was like a vast skating rink 
and the farrier had been tearing his hair for days. 

But finally the last team had slithered down to 
the gun park, hooked in and everything was reported 
ready. Billeting parties had gone on ahead. 

It is difficult to convey just what that march 
meant. It lasted four days, once the blizzard being 
so thick and blinding that the march was abandoned, 
the whole brigade remaining in temporary billets. 
The pace was a crawl. The team horses slid into 
each other and fell, the leads bringing the centres 
down, at every twenty yards or so. The least 
rise had to be navigated by improvising means of 



224 GUN FODDER 

foothold — scattering a near manure heap, getting 
gunners up with picks and shovels and hacking at 
the road surface, assisting the horses with drag- 
ropes — and all the time the wind was like a razor 
on one's face and the drivers up on the staggering 
horses beat their chests with both arms and changed 
over with the gunners when all feeling had gone 
from their limbs. Hour after hour one trekked 
through the blinding white, silent country, stamping 
up and down at the halts with an anxious eye on 
the teams, chewing bully beef and biscuits and 
thanking God for coffee piping hot out of a thermos 
in the middle of the day. Then on again in the 
afternoon while the light grew less and dropped 
finally to an inky grey and the wind grew colder, — 
hoping that the G.S. wagons, long since miles behind, 
would catch up. Hour after hour stiff in the saddle 
with icy hands and feet, one's neck cricked to dodge 
the wind, or sliding off stiffly to walk and get some 
warmth into one's aching limbs, the straps and 
weight of one's equipment becoming more and 
more irksome and heavy with every step forward 
that slipped two back. To reach the destination 
at all was lucky. To get there by ten o'clock at 
night was a godsend, although watering the horses 
and feeding them in the darkness with frozen fingers 
that burned on straps and buckles drew strange 
Scotch oaths. For the men, shelter of sorts, some- 
thing at least with a roof where a fire was lit at risk 
of burning the whole place down. For the officers 
sometimes a peasant's bed, or valises spread on the 
floor, unpacking as little as possible for the early 



THE WESTERN FRONT 225 

start in the morning, the servants cooking some sort 
of a meal, either on the peasant's stove or over a 
fire of sticks. 

The snow came again and one went on next day, 
blinded by the feathery touch of flakes that closed 
one's eyes so gently, crept down one's neck and 
pockets, lodged heavily in one's lap when mounted, 
clung in a frozen garment to one's coat when walk- 
ing, hissed softly on one's pipe and made one giddy 
with the silent, whirling, endless pattern which 
blotted out the landscape, great flakes like white 
butterflies, soft, velvety, beautiful but also like little 
hands that sought to stop one persistently, insidi- 
ously. "Go back," said their owner, "go back. 
We have hidden the road and the ditches and all 
the country. We have closed your eyelids and you 
cannot see. Go back before you reach that mad 
place where we have covered over silent things 
that once were men, trying to give back beauty 
to the ugliness that you have made. Why do you 
march on in spite of us ? Do you seek to become 
as they ? — Go back. Go back," they whispered. 

But we pushed blindly through, stumbling to an- 
other billet to hear that the snow had stalled the motor 
lorries and therefore there were no rations for the 
men and that the next day's march was twenty miles. 

During the night a thaw set in. Snowflakes 
turned to cold rain and in the dawn the men splashed, 
shivering, and harnessed the shivering horses. One 
or two may have drunk a cup of coffee given them 
by the villagers. The rest knew empty stomachs 
as well as shivering. The village had once been in 



226 GUN FODDER 

the war zone and only old women and children clung 
precariously to life. They had no food to give or 
sell. The parade was ordered for six o'clock. Some 
of the rear wagons, in difficulties with teams, had 
not come in till the dawn, the Captain and all of 
them having shared a biscuit or two since breakfast. 
But at six the battery was reported ready and not a 
man was late or sick. The horses had been in the 
open all night. 

So on we went again with pools of water on the 
icy crust of the road, the rain dripping off our caps. 
Would there be food at the other end? Our stom- 
achs cried out for it. 

And back in England full-fed fathers hearing the 
rain splashing against the windows put an extra 
coal on the fire, crying again, "We will fight to the 
last man!"; railway men and munitioners yelled, 
"Down tools! We need more pay!" and the 
Government flung our purses to them and said, 
"Help yourselves — of course we shall count on 
you to keep us in power at the next election." 

19. 

The village of Chuignolles, ice-bound, desolate, 
wood-patched, was our destination. The battles of 
the Somme had passed that way, wiping everything 
out. Old shell holes were softened with growing 
vegetation. Farm cottages were held together by 
bits of corrugated iron. The wind whistled through 
them, playing ghostly tunes on splintered trunks 
that once had been a wood. 

Two prison camps full of Germans, who in some 



THE WESTERN FRONT 227 

mysterious way knew that we had been in the 
Cambrai push and commented about it as we 
marched in, were the only human beings, save 
the village schoolmaster and his wife and child, in 
whose cottage we shared a billet with a Canadian 
forester. The schoolmaster was minus one arm, 
the wife had survived the German occupation and 
the child was a golden-haired boy full of laughter, 
with tiny teeth, blue eyes and chubby fingers that 
curled round his mother's heart. The men were 
lodged under bits of brick wall and felting that 
constituted at least shelter, and warmed themselves 
with the timber that the Canadian let them remove 
from his Deccaville train which screamed past the 
horse lines about four or five times a day. They 
had stood the march in some marvellous way that 
filled me with speechless admiration. Never a 
grouse about the lack of rations, or the awful cold 
and wet, always with a song on their lips they had 
paraded to time daily, looked after the horses with 
a care that was almost brotherly, put up with filthy 
billets and the extremes of discomfort with a readi- 
ness that made me proud. What kept them go- 
ing ? Was it that vague thing patriotism, the more 
vague because the war wasn't in their own country ? 
Was it the ultimate hope of getting back to their 
Flos and Lucys, although leave, for them, was 
practically non-existent? What had they to look 
forward to but endless work in filth and danger, 
heaving guns, grooming horses, cleaning harness 
eternally? And yet their obedience and readiness 
and courage were limitless, wonderful. 



228 GUN FODDER 

We settled down to training and football and did 
our best to acquire the methods of the new army. 
My Major, who had been in command of the brigade, 
had fallen ill on the march and had been sent to 
England. The doctor was of opinion that he wouldn't 
be coming out again. He was worn out. How 
characteristic of the wilfully blind system which 
insists that square pegs shall be made to fit round 
holes ! There was a man who should have been 
commanding an army, wasted in the command of a 
battery, while old men without a millionth part 
of his personality, magnetism or knowledge reck- 
lessly flung away lives in the endeavour to justify 
their positions. In the Boer War, if a General lost 
three hundred men there was an enquiry into the 
circumstances. Now if he didn't lose three hundred 
thousand he was a bad General. There were very 
few bad ones apparently ! 

At least one could thank God that the Major 
was out of it with a whole skin, although physically 
a wreck. 

The guns we drew from Ordnance at Poix and 
Chuignolles were not calibrated, but there was 
a range half a day's march distant and we were 
ordered to fire there in readiness for going back 
into the line. So one morning before dawn we set 
out to find the pin-point given us on the map. 
Dawn found us on a road which led through a worse 
hell than even Dante visited. Endless desolation 
spread away on every side, empty, flat, filled with 
an infinite melancholy. No part of the earth's 
surface remained intact. One shell hole merged 



THE WESTERN FRONT 229 

into another in an endless pattern of pockmarks, 
unexploded duds lying in hundreds in every direction. 
Bits of wreckage lay scattered, shell baskets, vague 
shapes of iron and metal which bespoke the one- 
time presence of man. Here and there steam rollers, 
broken and riddled, stuck up like the bones of camels 
in the desert. A few wooden crosses marked the 
wayside graves, very few. For the most part the 
dead had lain where they fell, trodden into the earth. 
Everywhere one almost saw a hand sticking up, a 
foot that had worked up to the surface again. A 
few bricks half overgrown marked where once 
maidens had been courted by their lovers. The 
quiet lane ringing with the songs of birds where they 
had met in the summer evenings at the stroke of 
the Angelus was now one jagged stump, knee-high, 
from which the birds had long since fled. The 
spirits of a million dead wailed over that ghastly 
graveyard, unconsecrated by the priests of God. 
In the grey light one could nearly see the corpses 
sit up in their countless hundreds at the noise of 
the horses' feet and point with long fingers, scream- 
ing bitter ridicule through their shapeless gaping 
jaws. And when at last we found the range and the 
guns broke the eerie stillness the echo in the hills 
was like bursts of horrible laughter. 

And on the edge of all this death was that little 
sturdy boy with the golden hair, bubbling with life, 
who played with the empty sleeve of his young 
father spewed out of the carnage, mutilated, broken 
in this game of fools. 



230 GUN FODDER 

20. 

February found us far from Chuignolles. Our 
road south had taken us through a country of 
optimism where filled-in trenches were being culti- 
vated once more by old women and boys, barbed 
wire had been gathered in like an iron harvest and 
life was trying to creep back again like sap up the 
stem of a bruised flower. Their homes were made 
of empty petrol tins, bits of corrugated iron, the 
wreckage of the battlefield, — these strange per- 
sistent old people clinging desperately to their clod 
of earth, bent by the storm but far from being broken, 
ploughing round the lonely graves of the unknown 
dead, sparing a moment to drop a bunch of green 
stuff on them. Perhaps some one was doing the 
same to their son's grave. 

We came to Jussy and Flavy-le-Martel, an un- 
dulating country of once-wooded hillsides now 
stamped under the Hun's heel and where even then 
the spiteful long-range shell came raking in the 
neatly swept muck heaps that once had been villages. 
The French were there those blue-clad, unshaven 
poilus who, having seen their land laid waste, turned 
their eyes steadily towards Germany with the gleam 
of faith in them that moves mountains, officered 
by men who called them "mes enfants" and ad- 
dressed each one as "thou." 

We had reached the southern end of the British 
line and were to take over the extra bit down to 
Barisis. Our own zone was between Essigny and 
Benay and in a morning of thick fog the Divisional 



THE WESTERN FRONT 231 

Battery Commanders and ourselves went up to the 
gun positions held by the slim French 75 's. They 
welcomed us politely, bowing us into scratches in 
the earth and offering sausages and red wine and 
cigarettes of Caporal. It appeared that peace 
reigned on that front. Not a shell fell, hardly was 
a round ever fired. Then followed maps and tech- 
nical details of pin-points and zero lines and O.P.'s 
and the colour of S.O.S. rockets. We visited the 
guns and watched them fire a round or two and 
discussed the differences between them and our 
eighteen-pounders, and at last after much shaking 
of hands bade them au re voir and left them in the 
fog. 

The relief took place under cover of night with- 
out a hitch, in a silence unbroken by any gun, and 
finally, after having journeyed to the O.P. with the 
French Battery Commander, up to our thighs in 
mud, fired on the zero point to check the line, re- 
ported ourselves ready to take on an S.O.S. , and 
watched the French officer disappear in the direction 
of his wagon line, we found ourselves masters of the 
position. 

The fog did eventually lift, revealing the least hope- 
ful of any gun positions it has ever been my lot to 
occupy. The whole country was green, a sort of 
turf. In this were three great white gashes of up- 
turned chalk visible to the meanest intelligence 
as being the three battery positions. True, they 
were under the crest from any Hun O.P., but that 
didn't minimise the absurdity. There were such 
things as balloons and aeroplanes. Further in- 



232 GUN FODDER 

spection revealed shell holes neatly bracketing the 
guns, not many, but quite sufficient to prove that 
Fritz had done his job well. Beside each gun pit 
was a good deep dugout for the detachment and 
we had sleeping quarters that would stop at least 
a four-two. The mess was a quaint little hut of 
hooped iron above ground, camouflaged with chalky 
earth, big enough to hold a table and four officers, 
if arranged carefully. We rigged up shelves and 
hung new fighting maps and Kirchners and got the 
stove to burn and declared ourselves ready for the 
war again. We spent long mornings exploring the 
trenches, calling on a rather peevish infantry whose 
manners left much to be desired, and found that 
as usual the enemy had all the observation on the 
opposite ridge. Behind the trench system we 
came upon old gun positions shelled out of all 
recognition, and looked back over an empty country- 
side with rather a gloomy eye. It was distinctly 
unprepossessing. If there were ever a show — 

So we played the gramophone by night and in- 
vented a knife-throwing game in the door of the 
hut and waited for whatever Fate might have in 
store for us. The Captain had gone on leave from 
Chuignolles. The night after his return he came 
up to the guns as my own leave was due again. So 
having initiated him into the defence scheme and 
the S.O.S. rules I packed up my traps and departed, 
— as it turned out for good. 

Fate decreed that my fighting was to be done with 
the battery which I had helped to make and whose 
dead I had buried. 



THE WESTERN FRONT 233 

On my return from leave fourteen days later, 
towards the end of February, I was posted back to 
them. The end of February, — a curious period 
of mental tightening up, of expectation of some 
colossal push received with a certain incredulity. 
He'd push all right, but not here. And yet, in the 
depths of one's being, there formed a vague ap- 
prehension that made one restless and took the 
taste out of everything. The work seemed unsatis- 
factory in the new battle positions to which we were 
moved, a side-step north, seven thousand yards 
from the front line, just behind Essigny which peeped 
over a million trenches to St. Quentin. The men 
didn't seem to have their hearts in it and one found 
fault in everything. The new mess, a wooden hut 
under trees on a hilltop with a deep dugout in it, 
was very nice, allowing us to bask in the sun when- 
ever it shone and giving a wonderful view over the 
whole zone, but seemed to lack privacy. One 
yearned to be alone sometimes and always there 
was some one there. The subalterns were prac- 
tically new to me, and although one laughed and 
talked one couldn't settle down as in the old days 
with the Major and Pip Don. The Scotch Captain 
was also occupying the hilltop. It was good to 
go off on long reconnaissances with him and argue 
violently on all the known philosophies and litera- 
tures, to challenge him to revolver shooting com- 
petitions and try and escape the eternal obsession 
that clouded one's brain, an uneasiness that one 
couldn't place, like the feeling that makes one cold 
in the pit of the stomach before going down to get 



234 GUN FODDER 

ready for a boxing competition, magnified a million 
times. 

The weather was warm and sunny after misty 
dawns and the whole country was white with float- 
ing cobwebs. The last touches were being put to 
the gun position and a narrow deep trench ran be- 
hind the guns which were a quarter of a mile beyond 
the hilltop, down beyond the railway line under 
camouflage in the open. Word came round that 
"The Attack" was for this day, then that, then the 
other, and the heavy guns behind us made the 
night tremble with their counter -preparation work, 
until at last one said, "Please God, they'll get on 
with it, and let's get it over !" The constant cry of 
" Wolf ! Wolf ! " was trying. 

Everybody knew about it and all arrangements 
were made, extra ammunition, and extra gunners 
at the positions, details notified as to manning 
O.P.'s, the probable time at which we should have 
to open fire being given as ten o'clock at night at 
extreme range. 

My Captain, a bloodthirsty Canadian, had gone 
on leave to the south of France, which meant leaving 
a subaltern in the wagon line while I had three with 
me. 

The days became an endless tension, the nights 
a jumpy stretch of darkness, listening for the un- 
known. Matters were not helped by my brother's 
rolling up one day and giving out the date definitely 
as the twenty-first. It was on the ninth that he 
arrived and took me for a joy-ride to Barisis to have 
a look at the Hun in the Foret de St. Gobain, so 



THE WESTERN FRONT 235 

deeply wooded that the car could run to within a 
hundred yards of the front-line trench. We dined 
at the charming old town of Noyon on the way 
back and bought English books in a shop there and 
stayed the night in a little inn just off the market 
square. The next morning he dropped me at the 
battery and I watched him roll away in the car, 
feeling an accentuated loneliness, a yearning to go 
with him and get out of the damned firing line, to 
escape the responsibility that rode one like an Old 
Man of the Sea. 

In war there is only one escape. 

The nights of the eighteenth and nineteenth were 
a continuous roll of heavy guns, lasting till just be- 
fore the dawn, the days comparatively quiet. Raids 
had taken place all along the front on both sides and 
identifications made which admitted of no argu- 
ment. 

On the night of the twentieth we turned in as 
usual about midnight with the blackness punctuated 
by flashes and the deep-voiced rumble of big guns 
a sort of comfort in the background. If Brother 
Fritz was massing anywhere for the attack at least 
he was having an unpleasant time. We were unable 
to join in because we were in battle positions seven 
thousand yards behind the front line. The other 
eighteen-pounders in front of us were busy, how- 
ever, and if the show didn't come off we were going 
up to relieve them in a week's time. So we played 
our good-night tune on the gramophone, the junior 
subaltern waiting in his pyjamas while the last 
notes were sung. Then he flicked out the light and 



236 GUN FODDER 

hopped into bed and presently the hut was filled 
by his ungentle snores. Then one rang through a 
final message to the signaller on duty at the guns 
and closed one's eyes. 

81. 

The twenty-first of March, 1918, has passed into 
history now, a page of disaster, blood and prisoners, 
a turning point in the biggest war in history, a day 
which broke more hearts than any other day in the 
whole four and a half years ; and yet to some of us 
it brought an infinite relief. The tension was re- 
leased. The fight was on to the death. 

We were jerked awake in the darkness by a noise 
which beat upon the brain, made the hill tremble 
and shiver, which seemed to fill the world and all 
time with its awful threat. 

I looked at my watch, — 4 a.m. 

The subaltern who lay on the bed beside mine 
said, "She's off!" and lit a candle with a laugh. 
He was dead within six hours. We put coats over 
our pyjamas and went out of the hut. Through the 
fog there seemed to be a sort of glow along the whole 
front right and left like one continuous gun flash. 
The Scots Captain came round with his subalterns 
and joined us, and two "Archie" gunners who shared 
a tent under the trees and messed with us. We 
stood in a group, talking loudly to make ourselves 
heard. There was nothing to be done but to stand 
by. According to plan we should not come into ac- 
tion until about 10 p.m. that night to cover the re- 
treat, if necessary, of the gunners and infantry in 



THE WESTERN FRONT 237 

the line. Our range to start with would be six 
thousand yards. 

So we dressed and talked to Brigade, who had no 
information. At six o'clock Brigade issued an 
order, "Man O.P.'s at once." The fog still hung 
like a blanket and no news had come through from 
the front line. The barrage was reported thick in 
front of and in Essigny with gas. 

The signallers were ready, three of them. The 
subaltern detailed had only to fill his pockets with 
food. 

The subaltern detailed ! It sounds easy, doesn't 
it? But it isn't any fun detailing a man to go out 
into a gas barrage in any sort of a show, and this 
was bigger than the wildest imagination could con- 
ceive. I wondered, while giving him instructions, 
whether I should ever see him again. I never did. 
He was taken prisoner, and the signallers too. 

They went out into the fog while the servants 
lit the fire and bustled about, getting us an early 
breakfast. The Anti-Aircraft discussed the ad- 
visability of withdrawing immediately or waiting 
to see what the barrage would do. They waited 
till about 9 a.m. and then got out. The Scots 
Captain and I wished them luck and looked at each 
other silently and refilled pipes. 

There was a hint of sun behind the fog now, but 
visibility only carried about two hundred yards. 
The Guns reported that the barrage was coming 
towards them. The Orderly Officer had been down 
and found all things in readiness for any emergency. 
None of the O.P.'s answered. Somewhere in that 



238 GUN FODDER 

mist they were dodging the barrage while we sat 
and waited, an eye on the weather, an eye on the 
time, an ear always for the buzz of the telephone; 
box respirators in the alert position, the guns laid 
on the S.O.S. loaded with H.E. 

Does one think in times like that ? I don't know. 
Only little details stand out in the brain like odd 
features revealed in a flash of lightning during a 
storm. I remember putting a drawing-pin into 
the corner of a Kirchner picture and seeing the head- 
lines of the next day's paper at home; I saw the 
faces of my people as they read them. I saw them 
just coming down to breakfast at the precise moment 
that I was sticking in the drawing-pin, the door 
open on to the lawn — in America, still asleep, as 
they were six hours behind, or possibly only just 
turning in after a dance — in Etaples, where per- 
haps the noise had already reached one of them. 
When would they hear from me again? They 
would be worrying horribly. 

The 'phone buzzed. "Brigade, sir!" 

"Right. Yes ? — S.O.S. 3000 ! Three thousand ? 

— Right ! Battery ! Drop to three thousand, S.O.S. 

— Three rounds per gun per minute till I come 
down." 

It was 10 a.m. and that was the range, when ac- 
cording to plan it shouldn't have come till 10 p.m. 
at double the range. 

The subalterns were already out, running down 
to the guns as I snatched the map and followed 
after, to hear the battery open fire as I left the hut. 

The greater significance of this S.O.S. came to me 



THE WESTERN FRONT 239 

before I'd left the hut. At that range our shells 
would fall just the other side of Essigny, still a vague 
blur in the mist. What had happened to the infantry 
three thousand yards beyond? What had become 
of the gunners? There were no signs of our people 
coming back. The country, as far as one could see 
in the fog, was empty save for the bursting shells 
which were spread about between Essigny and the 
railway, with the battery in the barrage. The 
noise was still so universal that it was impossible 
to know if any of our guns farther forward were 
still in action. They couldn't be if we were firing. 
It meant — God knew what it meant ! 

The subalterns went on to the guns while I stopped 
in the control dug into the side of the railway and 
shed my coat, sweating after the quarter-mile run. 
Five-nines and pip-squeaks were bursting on the 
railway and it seemed as if they had the battery 
taped. 

To get off my coat was a matter of less than half 
a minute. It had only just dropped to the ground 
when the signaller held me the instrument. "Will 
you speak here, sir?" 

I took it. 

"Is that the Major?" 

"Yes." 

"Will you come, sir? Mr. B.'s badly wounded. 

Sergeant has lost an eye and there's no one 

here to — " 

"Go on firing. I'm coming over." Badly 
wounded ? 

I leaped up out of the dugout and ran. There 



240 GUN FODDER 

was no shell with my name on it that morning. 
The ground went up a yard away from me half a 
dozen times but I reached the guns and dived under 
the camouflage into the trench almost on top of 
poor old B. who was lying motionless, one arm 
almost smashed off, blood everywhere. It was 
he who had said "She's off!" and lit the candle 
with a laugh. A man was endeavouring to tie him 
up. Behind him knelt a sergeant with his face in 
his hands. As I jumped down into the trench he 
raised it. "I'm blind, sir," he said. His right eye 
was shot away. 

The others were all right. I went from gun to 
gun and found them firing steadily. 

Somehow or other we tied up the subaltern and 
carried him along the narrow trench. Mercifully 
he was unconscious. We got him out at last on to a 
stretcher. Four men went away with it, the ser- 
geant stumbling after. The subaltern was dead 
before they reached a dressing station. He left 
a wife and child. 

There were only the junior subaltern and myself 
left to fight the battery. He was twenty last birth- 
day and young at that. If I stopped anything there 
was only that boy between King and country and the 
Hun. Is any reward big enough for these babes 
of ours ? 

Perhaps God will give it. King and country 
won't. 

Vague forms of moving groups of men could be 
seen through my glasses in the neighbourhood of 



THE WESTERN FRONT 241 

Essigny, impossible to say whether British or German. 
The sun was struggling to pierce the mist. The 
distance was about a thousand yards. We were 
still firing on the S.O.S. range as ordered. 

I became aware of a strange subaltern grinning 
up at me out of the trench. 

"Where the devil do you spring from ?" said I. 

He climbed out and joined me on the top, hatless, 
minus box respirator, cheery. Another babe. 

"I'm from the six-inch section straight in front, 
sir," he said. "They've captured my guns. Do 
you think you could take 'em on?" 

They were Germans, then, those moving forms ! 

I swept the glasses round once more anxiously. 
There were six, seven, ten, creeping up the railway 
embankment on the left flank behind the battery. 
Where the hell were our infantry reinforcements? 
My Babe sent the news back to Brigade while I got 
a gun on top and fired at the six-inch battery in 
front over open sights at a thousand yards with 
fuze 4. The Hun was there all right. He ran at the 
third round. Then we switched and took on in- 
dividual groups as they appeared. 

The party on the railway worried me. It was 
improper to have the enemy behind one's battery. 
So I got on the 'phone to the Scots Captain and ex- 
plained the position. It looked as if the Hun had 
established himself with machine guns in the signal 
box. The skipper took it on over open sights with 
H.E. At the fourth round there was only a settling 
mass of red brick dust. I felt easier in my mind 
and continued sniping groups of two or three with 



242 GUN FODDER 

an added zest and most satisfactory results. The 
Hun didn't seem to want to advance beyond Essigny. 
He hung about the outskirts and, when he showed, 
ran, crouching low. From his appearance it looked 
as if he had come to stay. Each of them had a 
complete pack strapped on to his back with a new 
pair of boots attached. The rest of the battery 
dropped their range and searched and swept from the 
pits. The Skipper joined in the sniping. 

A half platoon of infantry came marching at a 
snail's pace along the railway behind me, — on the 
top of course, in full view ! I wanted to make sure 
of those Huns on the embankment, so I whistled to 
the infantry officer and began semaphoring, a method 
of signalling at which I rather fancied myself. 

It seemed to frighten that infantry lad. At the 
first waggle he stopped his men and turned them 
about. In twenty leaps I covered the hundred 
yards or so between us, screaming curses, and brought 
him to a halt. He wore glasses and looked like a 
sucking curate. He may have been in private life 
but I gave tongue at high pressure, regardless of 
his feelings, and it was a very red-faced platoon 
that presently doubled along the other side of the 
railway under cover towards the embankment, 
thirsting for blood, mine for choice, Fritz's from 
embarras de richesse. 

I returned to my sniping, feeling distinctly better, 
as the little groups were no longer advancing but 
going back, — and there was that ferocious platoon 
chivvying them in the rear ! 

Things might have been much worse. 



THE WESTERN FRONT 243 

A megaphone's all right, but scream down it for 
three hours and see what happens to your voice. 
Mine sounded much like a key in a rusty lock. 
Hunger too was no longer to be denied about three 
o'clock in the afternoon after breakfast at cock- 
crow. The six-inch subaltern had tried unsuccess- 
ful to get back to his guns. The Hun, however, 
had established a machine-gun well the other side 
of them and approach single-handed was useless. 
Lord knew where his gunners were ! Prisoners 
probably. So he returned and asked if I had any 
use for him. Stout lads of his kidney are not met 
with every day. So I sent him up the hill to get 
food and a box respirator. He returned, grinning 
more cheerily than before, so I left him and the Babe 
to fight the good fight and went to get a fresh point 
of view from the tree O.P. up the hill. They seemed 
to be doing useful work between them by the time 
I got up the tree, so I left them to it and went to the 
mess to get some food. 

It seemed curiously empty. Kits, half-packed, 
lay about the floor. The breakfast plates, dirty, 
were still on the table. I called each servant by 
name. No answer. 

The other battery's servants were round the corner. 
I interviewed them. They had seen nothing of my 
people for hours. They thought that they had gone 
down to the wagon line. In other words it meant 
that while we were stopping the Hun, with poor 
old B. killed and the sergeant with an eye blown out, 
those dirty servants had run away ! 

It came over me with something of a shock that 



244 GUN FODDER 

if I put them under arrest the inevitable sentence 
was death. 

I had already sent one officer and three men to their 
death, or worse, at the O.P. and seen another killed 
at the guns. Now these four ! Who would be a 
Battery Commander? 

However, food was the immediate requirement. 
The other battery helped and I fed largely, eased 
my raw throat with pints of water and drank a tot 
of rum for luck. Those precious servants had left 
my even more precious cigars unpacked. If the 
Hun was coming I'd see him elsewhere before he 
got those smokes. So I lit one and filled my pockets 
with the rest, and laden with food and a flask of 
rum went back to the guns and fed my subaltern. 
The men's rations had been carried over from the 
cook house. 

A few more infantry went forward on the right 
and started a bit of a counter-attack but there was 
no weight behind it. They did retake Essigny or 
some parts of it, but as the light began to fail they 
came back again, and the Hun infantry hung about 
the village without advancing. 

With the darkness we received the order to retire 
to Flavy as soon as the teams came up. The barrage 
had long since dropped to desultory fire on the Hun 
side, and as we were running short of ammunition, 
we only fired as targets offered. On returning up 
the hill I found it strongly held by our infantry, 
some of whom incidentally stole my trench coat. 

The question of teams became an acute worry 
as time went on. The Hun wasn't too remote and 



THE WESTERN FRONT 245 

one never knew what he might be up to in the dark, 
and our infantry were no use because the line they 
held was a quarter of a mile behind the nearest 
battery. The skipper and I sent off men on bicycles 
to hurry the teams, while the gunners got the guns 
out of the pits in the darkness ready to hook in and 
move off at a moment's notice. 

Meanwhile we ate again and smoked and sum- 
moned what patience we could, endeavouring to 
snatch a sleep. It wasn't till ten o'clock that at 
last we heard wheels, — the gun limbers, cook's 
cart and a G.S. wagon came up with the wagon line 
officer who had brought the servants back with him. 
There was no time to deal with them. The officer 
went down to hook in to the guns and I saw to the 
secret papers, money, maps and office documents 
which are the curse of all batteries. The whole 
business of packing up had to be done in pitch dark- 
ness, in all the confusion of the other battery's 
vehicles and personnel, to say nothing of the in- 
fantry. We didn't bother about the Hun. Silence 
reigned. 

It was not till midnight that the last of the guns 
was up and the last of the vehicles packed and then 
I heard the voice of the Babe calling for me. He 
crashed up on a white horse in the darkness and 
said with a sob, "Dickie's wounded!" 

"Dickie" was the wagon line subaltern, a second 
lieutenant who had got the D.S.O. in the Cambrai 
show, one of the stoutest lads God ever made. In 
my mind I had been relying on him enormously 
for the morrow. 



246 GUN FODDER 

"Is he bad? Where is he?" 

"Just behind, sir," said the Babe. "I don't know 
how bad it is." 

Dickie came up on a horse. There was blood 
down the horse's shoulder and he went lame slightly. 

"Where is it, Dickie, Old Thing?" 

His voice came from between his teeth. "A 
shrapnel bullet through the foot," he said. "I'm 
damn sorry, Major." 

"Let's have a look." I flashed a torch on it. 
The spur was bent into his foot just behind the ankle, 
broken, the point sticking in. 

There was no doctor, no stretcher, no means of 
getting the spur out. 

"Can you stick it? The wagon is piled moun- 
tains high. I can't shove you on that. Do you 
think you can hang on till we get down to Flavy?" 

"I think so," he said. 

He had a drink of rum and lit a cigarette and the 
battery got mounted. I kept him in front with me 
and we moved off in the dark, the poor little horse, 
wounded also, stumbling now and again. What 
that boy must have suffered I don't know. It was 
nearly three hours later before the battery got near 
its destination and all that time he remained in the 
saddle, lighting one cigarette from another and telling 
me he was "damn sorry." I expected him to faint 
every moment and stood by to grab him as he fell. 

At last we came to a crossroads at which the 
battery had to turn off to reach the rendezvous. 
There was a large casualty clearing station about 
half a mile on. 



THE WESTERN FRONT 247 

So I left the battery in charge of the Babe and 
took Dickie straight on, praying for a sight of lights. 

The place was in utter darkness when we reached 
it, the hut doors yawning open, everything empty. 
They had cleared out ! 

Then round a corner I heard a motor lorry start- 
ing up. They told me they were going to Ham. 
There was a hospital there. 

So Dickie slid off his horse and was lifted into the 
lorry. 

As my trench coat had been stolen by one of the 
infantry he insisted that I should take his British 
warm, as within an hour he would be between 
blankets in a hospital. 

I accepted his offer gladly, — little knowing that 
I was not to take it off again for another nine 
days or so ! 

Dickie went off and I mounted my horse again, 
cursing the war and everything to do with it, and 
led his horse, dead lame now, in search of the battery. 
It took me an hour to find them, parked in a field, 
the gunners rolled up in blankets under the wagons. 

The 21st of March was over. The battery had 
lost three subalterns, a sergeant, three signallers 
and a gunner. 

France lost her temper with England. 

Germany, if she only knew it, had lost the war. 

22. 

The new line of defence was to be the canal at 
Flavy. 

After two hours' sleep in boots, spurs and Dickie's 



248 GUN FODDER 

coat, a servant called me with tea and bacon. 
Washing or shaving was out of the question. The 
horses were waiting — poor brutes, how they were 
worked those days — and the Quartermaster ser- 
geant and I got mounted and rode away into the 
unknown dark, flickering a torch from time to time 
on to the map and finding our way by it. 

With the Captain on leave, one subaltern dead, 
another left behind in Germany, a third wounded, 
one good sergeant and my corporal signaller away 
on a course, it didn't look like a very hopeful start 
for fighting an indefinite rearguard action. 

I was left with the Babe, keen but not very 
knowledgeable, and one other subaltern who be- 
came a stand-by. They two were coming with 
me and the guns ; the sergeant major would be 
left with the wagon line. Furthermore I had 
absolutely no voice and couldn't speak above a 
whisper. 

Of what had happened on the flanks of our army 
and along the whole front, there was absolutely no 
news. The Divisional infantry and gunners were 
mostly killed or captured in the mist. We never 
saw anything of them again but heard amazing 
tales of German officers walking into the backs of 
batteries in the fog and saying, "Will you cease fire, 
please? You are my prisoners," as polite as you 
please. 

What infantry were holding the canal, I don't 
know, — presumably those who had held our hill- 
top overnight. All we knew was that our immediate 
job was to meet the Colonel in Flavy and get a 



THE WESTERN FRONT 249 

position in the Riez de Cugny just behind and pump 
shells into the Germans as they advanced on the 
canal. The Babe and the Stand-by were to bring 
the battery to a given rendezvous. Meanwhile the 
Colonel and all of us foregathered in a wrecked 
cottage in Flavy and studied maps while the Colonel 
swallowed a hasty cup of tea. He was ill and a few 
hours later was sent back in an ambulance. 

By eight o'clock we had found positions and the 
guns were coming in. Camouflage was elementary. 
Gun platforms were made from the nearest cottage 
wall or barn doors. Ammunition was dumped be- 
side the gun wheels. 

While that was being done I climbed trees for an 
O.P., finding one eventually in a farm on a hill but the 
mist hid everything. The Huns seemed to get their 
guns up as if by magic and already shells were 
smashing what remained of Flavy. It was im- 
possible to shoot the guns in properly. The bursts 
couldn't be seen, so the line was checked and re- 
checked with compass and director, and we opened 
fire on targets ordered by Brigade, shooting off the 
map. 

Riez de Cugny was a collection of cottages with 
a street running through and woods and fields all 
around and behind. The inhabitants had fled in 
what they stood up in. We found a chicken cluck- 
ing hungrily in a coop and had it for dinner that night. 
We installed ourselves in a cottage and made new 
fighting maps, the Scots Captain and I — his 
battery was shooting not a hundred yards from mine 
— and had the stove lit with anything burnable 



250 GUN FODDER 

that came handy, old chairs, meat rolling boards, 
boxes, drawers and shelves. 

It seemed that the attack on the canal was more 
or less half-hearted. The bridges had been blown 
up by our sappers and the machine gunners made it 
too hot for the Hun. Meanwhile we had the gun 
limbers hidden near the guns, the teams harnessed. 
The wagon line itself was a couple of miles away, 
endeavouring to collect rations, forage and am- 
munition. The sergeant major was a wonder. 
During the whole show he functioned alone and 
never at any time did he fail to come up to the 
scratch. 

Even when I lost the wagon line for two days I 
knew that he was all right and would bring them 
through safely. Meanwhile aeroplanes soared over 
and drew smoke trails above the battery and after 
a significant pause five-nines began searching the 
fields for us. Our own planes didn't seem to exist 
and the Hun explored at will. On the whole things 
seemed pretty quiet. Communication was main- 
tained all the time with Brigade; we were quietly 
getting rid of a lot of ammunition on targets indi- 
cated by the infantry and the five-nines weren't 
near enough to worry about. So the Scot and I 
went off in the afternoon and reconnoitred a way 
back by a cross-country trail to the wagon line, — 
a curious walk that, across sunny fields where birds 
darted in and out of hedges in utter disregard of 
nations which were stamping each other into the 
earth only a few hedges away. Tiny buds were on 
the trees, tingling in the warmth of the early sun. 



THE WESTERN FRONT 251 

All nature was beginning the new year of life while 
we fools in our blind rage and folly dealt open- 
handedly with death, heeding not the promise of 
spring in our veins, with its colour and tenderness 
and infinite hope. 

Just a brief pause it was, like a fleecy cloud dis- 
appearing from view, and then we were in the wagon 
lines, soldiers again, in a tight position, with detail 
trickling from our lips, and orders and arrangements. 
Dickie was well on his way to England now, lucky 
Dickie ! And yet there was a fascination about it, 
an exhilaration that made one "fill the unforgiving 
minute with sixty seconds' worth of distance run." 
It was the real thing this, red war in a moving battle, 
and it took all one's brain to compete with it. I 
wouldn't have changed places with Dickie. A 
"Blighty" wound was the last thing that seemed 
desirable. Let us see the show through to the bitter 
end. 

We got back to the guns and the cottage and in 
front of us Flavy was a perfect hell. Fires in all 
directions and shells spreading all round and over the 
area. Our wagons returned, having snatched am- 
munition from blazing dumps, like a new version 
of snapdragon, and with the falling darkness the 
sky flared up and down fitfully. That night we 
dished out rum all round to the gunners and turned 
half of them in to sleep beside the guns while the 
other half fought. Have you ever considered sleep- 
ing beside a firing eighteen-pounder ? It's easy — 
when you've fought it and carried shells for forty- 
eight hours. 



252 GUN FODDER 

We had dinner off that neglected fowl, both bat- 
teries in the cottage, and made absurd remarks about 
the photos left on the mantelpiece and fell asleep, 
laughing, on our chairs, or two of us on a bed, booted 
and spurred still, taking turns to wake and dash 
out and fire a target called by the liaison officer down 
there with the infantry, while the others never moved 
when the salvos rocked the cottage to its foundations, 
or five-nines dropped in the garden and splashed it 
into the street. 

The Hun hadn't crossed the canal. That was 
what mattered. The breakfast was very nearly 
cooked next morning about seven and we were 
shooting gun fire and salvos when the order came 
over the 'phone to retire immediately and ren- 
dezvous on the Villeselve-Beaumont crossroads. 
Fritz was over the canal in the fog. The Babe 
dashed round to warn the teams to hook in. They 
had been in cottages about two hundred yards from 
the guns, the horses harnessed but on a line, the 
drivers sleeping with them. The Stand-by doubled 
over to the guns and speeded up the rate of fire. 
No good leaving ammunition behind. The sig- 
nallers disconnected telephones and packed them on 
gun limbers. Both gunners and drivers had break- 
fasted. We ate ours half cooked in our fingers 
while they were packing up. 

The mist was like a wet blanket. At twenty 
yards objects lost their shape and within about 
twenty minutes of receiving the order the battery 
was ready. We had the other battery licked by 
five good minutes and pulled out of the field on to the 



THE WESTERN FRONT 253 

road at a good walk. In the fog the whole country- 
looked different. Direction was impossible. One 
prayed that one wasn't marching towards Germany 
— and went on. At last I recognised the cross- 
country track with a sigh of relief. It was stiff going 
for the horses, but they did it and cut off a mile of 
road echoing with shouts and traffic in confusion, 
coming out eventually on an empty main road. 
We thought we were well ahead, but all the wagon 
lines were well in front of us. We caught up their 
tail-ends just as we reached Beaumont, which was 
blocked with every kind of infantry, artillery and 
R.A.M.C. transport, mules, horses, and motors. 
However there was a Headquarters in Beaumont, 
with Generals buzzing about and signallers, so I 
told the Stand-by to take the battery along with the 
traffic to the crossroads and wait for me. 

Our own General was in that room. I cleaved a 
passage to him and asked for orders. He told me 
that it was reported that the Hun was in Ham, — 
right round our left flank. I was therefore to get 
into position at the crossroads and "Cover Ham." 

"Am I to open fire, sir ?" 

"No. Not till you see the enemy." 

I'd had enough of "seeing the enemy" on the first 
day. It seemed to me that if the Hun was in Ham 
the whole of our little world was bound to be cap- 
tured. There wasn't any time to throw away, so 
I leaped on to my horse and cantered after the battery, 
followed by the groom. At the crossroads the block 
was double and treble while an officer yelled dis- 
entangling orders and pushed horses in the nose. 



254 GUN FODDER 

The map showed Ham to be due north of the 
crossroads. There proved to be an open field, 
turfed, just off the road with a dozen young trees 
planted at intervals. What lay between them and 
Ham it was impossible to guess. The map looked 
all right. So I claimed the traffic officer's attention, 
explained that a battery of guns was coming into 
action just the other side and somehow squeezed 
through, while the other vehicles waited. We 
dropped into action under the trees. The teams 
scattered about a hundred yards to a flank and we 
laid the line due north. 

At that moment a Staff subaltern came up at the 
canter. "The General says that the Hun is pretty 
near, sir. Will you send out an officer's patrol." 

He disappeared again, while I collected the 
Stand-by, a man of considerable stomach. 

The orders were simply, "Get hold of servants, 
cooks, spare signallers and clerks. Arm them with 
rifles and go off straight into the fog. Spread out 
and if you meet a Hun fire a salvo and double back 
immediately to a flank." 

While that was being done the Babe went round 
and had a dozen shells set at fuze 4 at each gun. 
It gives a lovely burst at a thousand yards. The 
Stand-by and his little army went silently forth. 
The corner house seemed to indicate an O.P. I 
took a signaller with me and we climbed up-stairs 
into the roof, knocked a hole in the tiles and installed 
a telephone which eventually connected with Brigade. 

I began to get the fidgets about the Stand-by. 
This cursed fog was too much of a good thing. It 



THE WESTERN FRONT 255 

looked as if the God the Huns talked so much about 
was distinctly on their side. However, after an 
agonising wait, with an ear strained for that salvo 
of rifle fire, the fog rolled up. Like dots in the dis- 
tant fields I saw the Stand-by with two rows of 
infantry farther on. The Stand-by saw them too 
and turned about. More than that, through glasses 
I could see troops and horse transports advancing 
quickly over the skyline in every direction. Columns 
of them, Germans, far out of range of an eighteen- 
pounder. As near as I could I located them on the 
map and worried Brigade for the next hour with 
pin-points. 

Ham lay straight in front of my guns. The 
Germans were still shelling it and several waves of 
our own infantry were lying in position in series 
waiting for their infantry to emerge round the town. 
It was good to see our men out there, although the 
line looked dangerously bulgy. 

After a bit I climbed down from the roof. The 
road had cleared of traffic and there was a subaltern 
of the Scot's battery at the corner with the neck of 
a bottle of champagne sticking out of his pocket. 
A thoughtful fellow. 

So was I ! A little later one of the Brigade Head- 
quarters officers came staggering along on a horse, 
done to the world, staying in the saddle more by 
the grace of God than his own efforts. Poor old 
thing, he was all in, mentally and physically. We 
talked for a while but that didn't improve matters 
and then I remembered that bottle of fizz. In the 
name of humanity and necessity I commandeered 



256 GUN FODDER 

it from the reluctant subaltern and handed it up to 
the man in the saddle. Most of it went down his 
unshaven chin and inside his collar, but it did the 
trick all right. 

What was left was mine by right of conquest, and 
I lapped it down, a good half bottle of it. There 
were dry biscuits forthcoming too, just as if one 
were in town, and I was able to cap it with a fat 
cigar. Happy days ! 

Then the Scot arrived upon his stout little mare 
followed by his battery, which came into position 
on the same crossroads a hundred yards away, shoot- 
ing at right angles to me, due east, back into Cugny 
from where we had come. Infantry were going up, 
rumours of cavalry were about and the blood- 
stained Tommies who came back were not very 
numerous. There seemed to be a number of bat- 
teries tucked away behind all the hedges and things 
looked much more hopeful. Apart from giving 
pin-points of the far distant enemy there was noth- 
ing to be done, except talk to all and sundry and 
try and get news. Some French machine-gunner 
officers appeared who told us that the entire French 
army was moving by forced marches to assist in 
stopping the advance and were due to arrive about 
six o'clock that night. They were late. 

Then, too, we found that the cellar of the O.P. 
house was stored with apples. There weren't many 
left by the time the two batteries had helped them- 
selves. As many horses as the farmyard would 
hold were cleared off the position and put under 
cover. The remainder and the guns were forced 



THE WESTERN FRONT 257 

to remain slap in the open. It was bad luck because 
the Hun sent out about a dozen low-flying machines 
that morning and instead of going over Ham, which 
would have been far more interesting for them, they 
spotted us and opened with machine guns. 

The feeling of helplessness with a dozen great 
roaring machines spitting at you just overhead is 
perfectly exasperating. You can't cock an eigh teen- 
pounder up like an Archie and have a bang at them, 
and usually, as happened then, your own machine 
gun jams. It was a comic twenty minutes but 
trying for the nerves. The gunners dived under 
the gun shields and fired rifles through the wheels. 
The drivers stood very close to the horses and hoped 
for the best. The signallers struggled with the 
machine gun, uttering a stream of blasphemies. 
And all the time the Hun circled and emptied drum 
after drum from a height of about a hundred feet. 
I joined in the barrage with my revolver. 

Two horses went down with a crash and a scream. 
A man toppled over in the road. Bullets spat on 
the ground like little puffs of smoke. Two went 
through my map, spread out at my feet, and at last 
away they roared, — presumably under the im- 
pression that they had put us out of action. The 
horses were dead ! 

The man was my servant, who had run away 
on the first morning. Three through his left leg. 
Better than being shot at dawn, anyhow. 

Curiously enough, the mess cook had already 
become a casualty. He was another of the faint- 
hearted and had fallen under a wagon in the fog 



258 GUN FODDER 

and been run over. A rib or two went. Poetic 
justice was rampant that morning. It left me two 
to deal with. I decided to let it go for the time and 
see if fate would relieve me of the job. As a matter 
of fact it didn't, and many many lifetimes later, when 
we were out of action, I had the two of them up, 
in a room with a ceiling and a cloth on the table, and 
the Babe stood at my elbow as a witness. 

One was a man of about thirty-eight or forty, a 
long-nosed, lazy, unintelligent blighter. The other 
was a short, scrubby, Dago-looking, bullet-headed 
person, — poor devils both, cannon fodder. My 
face may have looked like a bit of rock but I was 
immensely sorry for them. Given a moment of 
awful panic, what kind of intelligence could they 
summon to fight it, what sort of breeding and 
heredity was at the back of them? None. You 
might as well shoot two horses for stampeding at a 
bursting shell. They were gripped by blind fear 
and ran for it. They didn't want to. It was not a 
reasoned thing. It was a momentary lack of con- 
trol. 

But to shoot them for it was absurd, a ridiculous 
parody of justice. Supposing I had lost my nerve 
and cleared out? The chances are that being a 
senior officer I should have been sent down to the 
base as R.T.O. or M.L.O. and after a few months 
received the D.S.O. It has been done. They, as 
Tommies, had only earned the right to a firing 
party. 

It seemed to me therefore that my job was to 
prevent any recurrence, so in order to uproot the 



THE WESTERN FRONT 259 

fear of death I implanted the fear of God in them 
both. Sweat and tears ran down their faces at the 
end of the interview, — and I made the Dago my 
servant forthwith. 

He has redeemed himself many times under worse 
shell fire than that barrage of the 21st of March. 

23. 

Headquarters gave me another subaltern during 
the day. He had been with the battery in the early 
days at Armentieres but for various reasons had 
drifted to another unit. 

He joined us just before the order was received 
to take up another position farther back and lay 
out a line on the Riez de Cugny. The enemy was 
apparently coming on. So we hooked in once more 
about 4.30 in the afternoon and trekked up the 
road on to a ridge behind which was the village of 
Villeselve. The Hun seemed to have taken a dis- 
like to it. Five-nines went winging over our heads 
as we came into action and bumped into the village 
about two hundred yards behind. The Babe rode 
back to Brigade to report and ask for orders. There 
was no means of knowing where our infantry were 
except through Brigade, who were at infantry head- 
quarters, and obviously one couldn't shoot blind. 

Meanwhile the Dago servant collected bread and 
bully and a Tommy's water bottle, which stank of 
rum but contained only water, and the Stand-by, 
the new lad and myself sat under a tree watching 
the Hun barrage splash in all directions and made a 
meal. 



260 GUN FODDER 

The Babe didn't return as soon as he ought to 
have done. With all that shooting going on I was 
a little uneasy. So the new lad was told to go to 
Brigade and collect both the orders and the Babe. 

It was getting dark when the Scot brought up 
his battery and wheeled them to drop into action 
beside us. As he was doing so the Babe and the 
new lad returned together. Their news was un- 
comforting. Brigade Headquarters had retired into 
the blue, and the other two batteries which had 
been on the road had also gone. There was no one 
there at all. 

So the Scotsman and I held a council of war, while 
the Stand-by went off on a horse to reconnoitre a 
passable way round the shelled village. The light 
had gone and the sky behind us was a red glare. 
The village was ablaze and at the back of it on the 
next ridge some aeroplane hangars were like a beacon 
to guide storm-tossed mariners. The crackling 
could be heard for miles. 

There was no one to give us the line or a target, 
no means of finding where the headquarters were 
or any likelihood of their finding us as we hadn't 
been able to report our position. We were useless. 

At the back of my brain was the word Guivry. 
I had heard the Adjutant mention it as a rendezvous. 
On the map it seemed miles away, but there was 
always the chance of meeting some one on the way 
who would know. So while the other people 
snatched a mouthful of ration biscuit we brought 
the teams up and hooked in. 

The Scotsman led as his battery was nearest the 



THE WESTERN FRONT 261 

track that the Stand-by reported passable. The 
only light was from the burning hangars and we ran 
into mud that was axle deep. Incidentally we ran 
into the barrage. A subaltern of the other battery 
was blown off his feet and deposited in a sitting 
position in a mud hole. He was fished out, splutter- 
ing oaths, and both batteries went off at a trot that 
would have made an inspecting General scream un- 
intelligible things in Hindustani. Mercifully they 
don't inspect when one is trying to hurry out of a 
barrage, so we let it rip up the slope until we had 
got past the hangars in whose glow we showed up 
most uncomfortably on the top of the ridge. As 
soon as we had got into darkness again we halted 
and took stock of ourselves. No one was hurt or 
missing, but all the dismounted men were puffing 
and using their sleeves to wipe the sweat off their 
faces. I was one. 

It was from this point that the second phase of 
the retreat began. It was like nothing so much as 
being in that half dead condition on the operating 
table when the fumes of ether fill one's brain with 
phantasies and flapping birds and wild flights of 
imagination just before one loses consciousness, 
knowing at the time that one hasn't quite "gone." 
Overfatigue, strain, lack of food, and above all was 
a craving to stop everything, lie down, and sleep 
and sleep and sleep. One's eyes were glued open 
and burnt in the back of one's head, the skin of one's 
face and hands tightened and stretched, one's feet 
were long since past shape and feeling; wherever 
the clothes touched one's body they irritated, — 



262 GUN FODDER 

not that one could realise each individual ache then. 
The effect was one ceaseless dolour from which the 
brain flung out and away into the no man's land of 
semi-consciousness, full of thunder and vast fires, 
only to swing back at intervals to find the body 
marching, marching endlessly, staggering almost 
drunkenly, along the interminable roads of France 
in the rain and cold. Hour after hour one rode 
side by side with the Scot, silent, swaying in the 
saddle, staring hollow-eyed into the dark ahead, or 
sliding with a stiff crash to the ground and blundering 
blindly from rut to rut, every muscle bruised and 
torn. Unconsciously every hour one gave a ten- 
minute halt. The horses stood drooping, the men 
lay down on the side of the road, motionless bundles 
like the dead, or sprawled over the vehicles, limp 
and exhausted, not smoking, not talking, content 
to remain inert until the next word of command 
should set them in motion again ; wonderful in their 
recognition of authority, their instant unquestioning 
obedience, their power of summoning back all their 
faculties for just one more effort, and then another 
after that. 

The country was unknown. Torches had given 
out their last flicker. Road junctions were un- 
marked. We struck matches and wrestled with 
maps that refused to fold in the right place, and every 
time Guivry seemed a million miles away. The 
noise of shelling dropped gradually behind until 
it became a mere soothing lullaby like the breaking 
of waves upon a pebble beach while we rolled with 
crunching wheels down the long incline into Buchoire, 



THE WESTERN FRONT 263 

a village of the dead, without lights, doors creaking 
open at the touch of the wind. 

We halted there to water the horses and give 
them what forage could be scraped together. The 
Scot and I rode on alone to Guivry, another seven 
kilometres. As we neared it so the sound of guns 
increased again, as though a military band had 
died away round one corner and came presently 
marching back round another, playing the same air, 
getting louder as it came. 

In a small room lit by oil lamps, Generals and 
Staffs were bending over huge maps scored heavily 
with red and blue pencils. Telephones buzzed and 
half conversations with tiny voices coming from back 
there kept all the others silent. Orderlies came in 
motor overalls with all the dust of France over them. 

They gave us food, — whisky, bully and bread, 
apples with which we filled our pockets. Of our 
Corps they knew nothing, but after much tele- 
phoning they "thought" we should find them at 
Chateau Beines. 

The Scot and I looked at one another. Chateau 
Beines was ten minutes from the burning hangars. 
We had passed it on our way down, empty, silent, 
hours ago, in another life. Would the horses get 
us back up that interminable climb ? Who should 
we find when we got there — our people or Germans ? 
We rode back to Buchoire and distributed apples to 
the Babe, the Stand-by and the others and broke 
it to them that we had to go back on the chance of 
finding our brigade. The horses had been watered 
but not fed. 



264 GUN FODDER 

We turned about and caught up French transport 
which had blocked the road in both directions. We 
straightened them out, a wagon at a time, after 
endless wagging of hands and tongues and finally- 
got to Chateau Beines to find a French Head- 
quarters installed there who knew nothing about our 
brigade. There were English artillery in the farm 
a mile farther. 

We went there. The farm was a ruin wreathed 
in fog, but from beneath the now smoking hangars 
a battery of ours was spitting shells into the night. 
Headquarters was somewhere in the farm cellar. 
We followed up a chink of light to its source and 
found a row of officers lying on wooden beds of 
rabbit netting, a signaller squatting on a reel of 
wire in the corner over a guttering candle, the con- 
crete roof dripping moisture upon them. It was 

3 A.M. 

Orders were to come into action at once and open 
fire on a certain main-road junction. 

The Scot and I went out and scoured ploughed 
fields waist-deep in drifting mist, looking for a posi- 
tion, found a belt of turf on the edge of a road and 
fetched the guns up. Locating the position on the 
map, working out the angle of the line of fire and 
the range with protractors took us back to the cellar 
where those lucky devils who were not commanding 
batteries were lying stertorous. Horses and men 
sweated their heart's blood in getting the guns into 
position on the spongy ground and within an hour 
the first ear-splitting cracks joined in the chorus 
of screaming resistance put up by the other two 



THE WESTERN FRONT 265 

batteries, with gunners who lost their balance at 
the weight of a shell and fell upon their faces, picking 
themselves up without even an oath and loading 
up again in a stupor by a process of sub-conscious 
reflex energy. 

What are the limits of human endurance? Are 
there any ? We had three more days and nights 
of it and still those men went on. 

24. 

Sometime or other the Babe, the Stand-by and 
the other lad got some tea down in the cellar and 
fell asleep over their cups. Sometime or other I 
too got some tea, closed my eyes and fell off the 
box on which I was sitting. Sometime or other we 
got the order to cease fire and seek covered positions 
for the day's work. Time, as one ordinarily recog- 
nises it, had ceased. There was no night, marked 
by rest, nor day divided off into duties and meals. 
Time was all one, a blurry mixture of dark and 
cold ; light, which hurt one's eyes, and sweat. 
Sleep and rest were not. What was happening we 
did not know. It might have been the end of the 
world and we shouldn't have known till we were 
in the next. There were just guns to be fired at 
given points for ever and ever, always and always, 
world with or without end, amen. Guns, guns and 
nothing but guns, in front, behind, right and left, 
narrowing down to those of mine which grew hot 
and were sponged out and went on again and still on, 
unhurriedly, remorselessly into the German advance, 
and would go on long and long after I was dead. 



266 GUN FODDER 

One's mind refused to focus anything but angles 
and ranges and ammunition supply. There was 
nothing of importance in the world but those three 
things, whether we moved on or stayed where we 
were, whether we walked or whether we rode, 
whether we ate or whether we starved. In a sort 
of detached fog one asked questions and gave orders 
about food and forage and in the same fog food 
eventually appeared while one stared at the map 
and whispered another range which the Stand-by 
shouted down the line of guns. 

With spades we cut a gap in a hedge which shut 
off an orchard from the road. The ditch was filled 
with stones and bricks from the farm. The horses 
took the guns in one by one, and other gaps were 
cut in the front hedge for the gun muzzles. Plat- 
forms were dug and trail beds, and ammunition 
began to pile up beside each gun as the sun came 
out and thinned the fog. 

A telephone line ran away across the fields and 
a new voice came through the receiver, tickling one's 
ear, — that of an uncaptured Colonel of a captured 
brigade who honoured us by taking command of 
our brigade. With a shaven face and washed hands 
he had looked upon our bearded chins and foul 
appearance and talked of the condition of our horses. 

In front of the guns a long line of French machine 
gunners had dug themselves in and we were on the 
top of a high ridge. Below us the ground sloped 
immediately away to a beautiful green valley which 
rose up again to a feathery wood about to burst into 
green and ran past it in undulations like the green 



THE WESTERN FRONT 267 

rollers of the Atlantic. Away in the distance were 
the great bulbous ever-watching eyes of the enemy, 
— balloons, which as the sun came up, advanced 
steadily, hypnotically, many of them strung out 
in a long line. Presently from the wood below 
came trickling streams of men, like brown insects 
coming from a dead horse. The sun glinted on 
their rifles. Steadily they came, unhurriedly, plod- 
ding up to the ridge, hundreds of them, heedless of 
the enemy barrage which began climbing too in 
great hundred-yard jumps. 

"What news?" said I, as one trickle reached me. 
It was led by a Colonel. 

He shook his head. "We've been relieved by the 
French," said he, not stopping. 

"Relieved? But, God's truth, isn't there a war 
on?" 

"Who the hell are you talking to?" He flung 
it over his shoulder and his men followed him 
away. 

Somehow it didn't seem credible. And yet there 
all along the ridge and the valley was the entire 
British infantry, or what looked like it, leisurely 
going back while the French machine gunners looked 
at them and chattered. I got on the 'phone to 
Brigade about it. The Colonel said, "Yes, I know." 

We went on firing at long range. The teams were 
just behind the guns, each one under an apple tree, 
the drivers lying beside their horses. The planes 
which came over didn't see us. The other batteries 
were in the open behind the crest tucked into folds 
of the ground, all the wagon lines clinging to a farm- 



268 GUN FODDER 

house about a mile back where the headquarters 
was. The Hun barrage was quickly coming nearer. 

A troop of cavalry trotted down into it and took 
cover under one end of the wood. They had only 
one casualty. A shell struck a tree and brought 
it crashing down on top of a horse and rider. The 
last of our infantry had passed behind us and the 
wood was empty again. The opposite ridge was 
unoccupied ; glasses showed no one in the country 
that stretched away on the left. Only the balloons 
seemed almost on top of us. The cavalry left the 
wood and trotted over the ridge in a long snake of 
half sections, and then the fringe of the barrage 
reached us. It splashed into the orchard. Drivers 
leaped to the horses' heads. No man or animal 
was touched. Again one heard it coming, in- 
stinctively crouching at its shriek. Again it left 
us untouched as with an inattentive eye I saw the 
cavalry come trotting quietly back. It was fol- 
lowed by a chattering of the French. The reason 
was obvious. Out of the wood other streams came 
trickling, blue this time, in little parties of four and 
five, momentarily increasing in number and pace. 

The first lot reached the battery and said they 
were the second line. The Boche was a "sale race, 
Ven zut alors!" and hitching their packs they passed 
on. 

The machine gunners began to get ready. The 
battery began to look at me. The Stand-by gave 
them another salvo for luck and then ordered ten 
rounds per gun to be set at fuze 6 — the edge of 
the wood was about fifteen hundred. 



THE WESTERN FRONT 269 

The next stream of poilus was hotter. They 
sweated much all among the orchard and told me 
with a laugh that the Boche would be here in five 
minutes. But when I suggested that they should 
stay and see what we could do together they shrugged 
their shoulders, spat, said "En route!" and en routed. 

The gunners had finished setting the fuzes and 
were talking earnestly together. The machine 
gunners weren't showing much above ground. 
The barrage had passed over to our rear. 

I called up the Colonel again and told him. He 
told me I could drop the range to three thousand. 

The Stand-by passed the order. It got about as 
far as the first gun and there died of inanition. 
The battery was so busy talking about the expected 
arrival of the Boche that orders faded into insignifi- 
cance. The Stand-by repeated the order. Again 
it was not passed. I tried a string of curses but 
nothing more than a whisper would leave my throat. 
The impotence of it was the last straw. I whispered 
to the Stand-by to repeat word for word what I 
said. He megaphoned his hands and you could 
have heard him across the Channel, — a lovely 
voice, a bull of Bashan, that rose above the crash of 
shells and reached the last man at the other end of 
the line of guns. What he repeated was totally 
unprintable. If voice failed me, vocabulary hadn't. 
I rose to heights undreamed of by even the Tid- 
worth sergeant major. 

At the end of two minutes we began a series which 
for smartness, jump, drive, passing and execution 
of orders would have put a Salisbury depot battery 



270 GUN FODDER 

into the waste-paper basket. Never in my life 
have I seen such gunnery as those fellows put up. 
Salvos went over like one pistol shot. Six rounds 
battery fire one second were like the ticking of a 
stop watch. Gun fire was like the stoking of the 
fires of hell by demons on hot cinders. 

One forgot to be tired, one forgot to look out for 
the Hun in the joy of that masterly performance, 
a fortissima cantata on a six-pipe organ of death 
and hate. Five minutes, ten minutes? I don't 
know, but the pile of empty shell cases became a 
mountain behind each gun. 

A signaller tugged at my arm and I went to the 
'phone. 

" Retire immediately ! Rendezvous at Buchoire ! " 

I was still caught up with the glory of that shoot- 
ing. 

"What the hell for?" said I. "I can hang on 
here for ages yet." 

"Retire immediately!" repeated the Colonel. 

I came to earth with a bang and began to apolo- 
gise. Somehow it doesn't do to talk like that to 
one's Colonel even in moments of spiritual exalta- 
tion. 

We ceased fire and packed up and got mounted 
and hooked in like six bits of black ginger, but the 
trouble was that we had to leave the comparative 
safety of our orchard and go out into the barrage 
which was churning up the fields the other side of 
the hedge. I collected the Stand-by and gave him 
the plan of campaign. They were to follow me in 
column of route at a trot, with twenty yards between 



THE WESTERN FRONT 271 

guns, — that is, at right angles to the barrage, so 
as to form a smaller target. No man can have failed 
to hear his voice but for some unknown reason they 
failed to carry out the order. The leading gun 
followed me over the ditch on to the field, shells 
bursting on every side. About sixty yards r cross 
the field I looked over my shoulder and saw that 
they were all out of the orchard but wheeling to 
form line, broadside on to the barrage. 

The leading gun, which the Stand-by took on, 
was the only one that got safely away. The five 
others all stuck with horses dead and men wounded, 
and still that barrage dropped like hail. 

We cut out the dead horses and shot the badly 
wounded ones and somehow managed a four-horse 
team for each gun. The wounded who couldn't 
walk were lifted on to limbers and held there by 
the others, and the four-horse teams nearly broke 
their hearts before we got the guns off that devilish 
bit of ploughed land on to a road, and after another 
twenty minutes had got out of the shell fire. Three 
sergeants were wounded, a couple of drivers and a 
gunner. The road was one solid mass of moving 
troops, French and English, infantry, gunners and 
transport. There was no means of going cross- 
country with four-horse teams. One had to follow 
the stream. Fortunately there were some R.A.M.C. 
people with stretchers and there was a motor am- 
bulance. Between the two we got all our casualties 
bandaged and away. The other batteries had been 
gone already three quarters of an hour. There was 
no sign of them anywhere. 



272 GUN FODDER 

My own battery was scattered along a mile of 
traffic ; one gun here, another there, divided by field 
kitchens and French mitrailleuse carts, marching 
infantry and limbered G.S. wagons. Where the 
sergeant major was with the wagon line was beyond 
the bounds of conjecture. One hoped to find him 
at the rendezvous at Buchoire. There was nothing 
with us in the way of rations or forage and we only 
had the limbers full of ammunition. Fortunately 
the men had had a midday ration issued in the 
orchard, and the horses had been watered and fed 
during the morning. In the way of personnel I 
had the Quartermaster sergeant, and two sergeants. 
The rest were bombardiers, gunners and drivers, — 
about three men per gun all told. The outlook was 
not very optimistic. 

The view itself did not tend to lighten one's 
depression. We climbed a fairly steep slope which 
gave a view of the country for miles on either side. 
The main roads and every little crossroad as far 
as the eye could carry were all massed with moving 
troops going back. It looked like the Allied armies 
in full retreat, quite orderly but none the less routed. 
Where would it end? From rumours which ran 
about we were almost surrounded. The only way 
out was south. We were inside a bottle which we 
could not break, all aiming for the neck. 

And yet everywhere on that slope French infantry 
had dug themselves in, each man in a little hole 
about knee-deep with a tiny bank of mud in front 
of him, separated from the next man by a few yards. 
They sat and smoked in their holes, so like half- 



THE WESTERN FRONT 273 

dug graves, waiting for the enemy, watching us go 
back with a look in their eyes that seemed to be 
of scorn. Now and again they laughed. It was 
difficult to meet those quiet eyes without a surge of 
rage and shame. How much longer were we going 
to retreat ? Where were our reinforcements ? Why 
had our infantry been "relieved" that morning? 
Why weren't we standing shoulder to shoulder with 
those blue-clad poilus? What was the brain at 
the back of it all ? Who was giving the orders ? 
Was this the end of the war? Were we really 
beaten ? Could it be possible that somewhere there 
was not a line of defence which we could take up 
and hold, hold for ever? Surely with magnificent 
men like ours who fought till they dropped and then 
picked themselves up and fought again, surely some- 
thing could be done to stop this appalling debacle ! 

25. 

The tide of traffic took us into Guiscard where we 
were able to pull out of the stream one by one and 
collect as a battery, — or at least the gun part of 
it. While studying the map a mounted orderly 
came up and saluted. 

"Are you the — Brigade, sir?" he said. 

I said yes. 

"The orders are to rendezvous at Muiraucourt 
instead of Buchoire." 

To this day that man remains a mystery. The 
rest of the brigade did rendezvous at Buchoire and 
fought twice again that day. The Colonel never 
gave any order about Muiraucourt and had never 



274 GUN FODDER 

heard of the place. Where the orderly came from, 
who he was, or how he knew the number of the brig- 
ade are unsolved problems. I never saw him again. 
Having given the message he disappeared into the 
stream of traffic, and I, finding the new rendezvous 
to be only about three kilometres away in a different 
direction to Buchoire and out of the traffic road, 
led on again at once. 

We passed French gunners of all calibres firing 
at extreme range and came to Muiraucourt to find 
it absolutely empty and silent. While the horses 
were being watered and the wounded ones bandaged 
I scouted on ahead and had the luck to find an A.S.C. 
officer with forage for us and a possibility of rations 
if we waited an hour. It was manna in the wilder- 
ness. 

We drew the forage and fed the starving horses. 
At the end of the hour an A.S.C. sergeant rode in to 
say that the ration wagons had been blown up. — 
We took up an extra hole in our Sam Brownes. It 
appeared that he had seen our headquarters and 
the other batteries marching along the main road 
in the direction of Noyon, to which place they were 
undoubtedly going. 

The Quartermaster whispered something about 
bread and tea. So we withdrew from the village 
and halted on a field just off the road and started a 
fire. The bread ration was a snare and a delusion. 
It worked out at about one slice per every other 
man. He confided this to me sadly while the men 
were spread-eagled on the bank at the roadside, 
enjoying all the anticipation of a full stomach. We 



THE WESTERN FRONT 275 

decided that it wasn't a large enough quantity to 
split up so I went over and put the position to them, 
telling them that on arrival at Noyon we hoped to 
find the brigade looking out for us with a meal for 
everybody ready. Meanwhile there wasn't enough 
to go round. What about tossing for it? . . . The 
ayes had it. They tossed as if they were going to a 
football match, the winners sending up a cheer, and 
even the losers sitting down again with a grin. 

I decided to ride on into Noyon and locate the 
brigade and find out where to get rations. So I 
handed the battery to the Stand-by to bring on when 
ready, left him the Babe and the other lad, and took 
the Quartermaster on with me. 

It was a nightmare of a ride through miles and 
miles of empty villages and deserted country, 
blown-up bridges like stricken giants blocking every 
way, not a vehicle on the roads, no one in sight, 
the spirit of desertion overhanging it all, with the 
light failing rapidly and Noyon apparently as far 
off as ever. The horses were so done that it was 
difficult to spur them out of a walk, we ourselves 
so done that we could hardly raise the energy to 
spur them. At last after hours of riding we came 
to the main Roye-Noyon road but didn't recognise 
it in the dark and turned the wrong way, going at 
least half an hour before we discovered our mis- 
take ! It was the last straw. 

A thing that added to our anxiety was the sight 
of big guns on caterpillars all coming away from the 
place we were going to and as we got nearer the 
town the roar of bursting shells seemed to be very 



276 GUN FODDER 

near. One didn't quite know that streams of the 
enemy would not pour over the crest at any minute. 
Deep in one's brain a vague anxiety formed. The 
whole country was so empty, the bridges so well 
destroyed. Were we the last — had we been cut 
off? Was the Hun between us and Noyon? Sup- 
pose the battery were captured? I began to wish 
that I hadn't ridden on but had sent the Stand-by 
in my place. For the first time since the show began, 
a sense of utter loneliness overwhelmed me, a bitter 
despair at the uselessness of individual effort in this 
gigantic tragedy of apocalyptic destruction. Was 
it a shadow of such loneliness as Christ knew upon 
the cross when he looked out upon a storm-riven 
world and cried, "My God, my God, why hast 
thou forsaken me?" All the evil in the world was 
gathered here in shrieking orgy, crushing one to such 
mental and physical tiredness that death would 
only have been a welcome rest. 

Unaided I should not have regretted that way 
out, God knows. But two voices came to me through 
the night, — one from a little cottage among the 
pine trees in England, the other calling across the 
Atlantic with the mute notes of a violin. 

"Your men look to you," they whispered. "We 
look to you. ..." 

26. 

We came to Noyon ! 

It was as though the town were a magnet which 
had attracted all the small traffic from that empty 
countryside, letting only the big guns on caterpillars 



THE WESTERN FRONT 277 

escape. The centre of the town, like a great octopus, 
has seven roads which reach out in every direction. 
Each of these was banked and double-banked with 
an interlocked mass of guns and wagons. Here 
and there frantic officers tried to extricate the tangle 
but for the most part men sat silent and inert upon 
their horses and vehicles beyond effort and beyond 
care. 

Army Headquarters told me that Noyon would 
begin to be shelled in an hour's time and gave me 
maps and a chit to draw food from the station, but 
they had never heard of the brigade and thought 
the Corps had been wiped out. As I left, the new 
lad came up and reported that the battery had 
halted on the outskirts of the town. We went back 
to it and collected the limbers and tried to take them 
with us to the station, with hearts beating high at 
the thought of food. It was impossible, so we left 
them on the pavement and dodged single file be- 
tween wagon wheels and horses' legs. After an 
hour's fighting every yard of the way we got to the 
station to find a screaming mob of civilians carrying 
bundles, treading on each other in their efforts to 
enter a train, weeping, praying, cursing, out of all 
control. 

The R.S.O. had gone. There was no food. 

We fought our way back to Army Headquarters 
where we learned that a bombardier with two wagons 
of rations destined to feed stray units like us had gone 
to Porquericourt, five kilometres out. If we found 
him we could help ourselves. If we didn't find him 
— a charming smile, and a shrug of the shoulders. 



278 GUN FODDER 

I decided to try the hotel where I had spent a 
night with my brother only three weeks ago. Three 
weeks, was it possible? I felt years older. The 
place was bolted and barred and no amount of ham- 
mering or shouting drew an answer. The thought 
of going back empty-handed to my hungry battery 
was an agony. The chances of finding that bom- 
bardier were about one in a million, so small that 
he didn't even represent a last hope. In utter 
despair one called aloud upon Christ and started 
to walk back. In a narrow unlit street we passed 
a black doorway in which stood a soldier. 

" Can you give me a drink of water ? " said I. 

"Yes," said he. "Come in, sir. This is the 
officers' club." 

Was it luck? Or did Christ hear? You may 
think what you like but I am convinced that it was 
Christ. 

We went in. In one room were sleeping officers 
all over the floor. The next was full of dinner tables 
uncleared, one electric light burning. It was long 
after midnight. We helped ourselves to bits of 
bread from each table and drank the leavings of 
milk which had been served with the coffee. Then 
a waiter came. He said he would cook us some tea 
and try and find a cold tongue or some ham. I told 
him that I had a starving battery down the road 
and wanted more than tea and ham. I wanted food 
in a sack, two sacks, everything he could rake up, 
anything. 

He blinked at me through his glasses. "I'll see 
what I can do, sir," he said and went away. 



THE WESTERN FRONT 279 

We had our tea and tongue and he brought a 
huge sack with loaves and tins of jam and bits 
of cheese and biscuits and packets of cigarettes and 
tins of bully. Furthermore he refused all payment 
except two francs for what we had eaten. 

"That's all right, sir," he said. "I spent three 
days in a shell hole outside Wipers on one tin o' 
bully. — That's the best I can do for you." 

I wrung him by the hand and told him he was a 
brother and a pal, and between us the lad and I 
shouldered the sack and went out again, thanking 
God that at least we had got something for the 
men to eat. 

On returning to the battery I found that they had 
been joined by six wagons which had got cut off 
from the sergeant major's lot and the entire wagon 
line of the Scotch Captain's battery with two of 
his subalterns in charge. They too were starving. 

The sack didn't go very far. It. only took a min- 
ute or so before the lot was eaten. Then we started 
out, now a column about a mile long, to find Por- 
quericourt, a tiny village some two kilometres off 
the main road, the gunners sleeping as they walked, 
the drivers rocking in the saddle, the horses stumbling 
along at a snail's pace. None of us had shaved or 
washed since the 21st. We were a hollow-eyed, 
draggled mob, but we got there at last to be chal- 
lenged by sentries who guarded sleeping bits of units 
who had dropped where they stood all over the 
place. While my two units fixed up a wagon line 
I took the Quartermaster with me and woke up every 
man under a wagon or near one, asking him if he 



280 GUN FODDER 

were Bombardier So and So, — the man with the 
food. How they cursed me. It took me an hour to 
go the rounds and there was no bombardier with 
food. The men received the news without comment 
and dropped down beside the wagons. The Babe 
had collected a wagon cover for us to sleep under 
and spread it under a tree. The four of us lay on 
it side by side and folded the end over ourselves. 
There was a heavy dew. But my job wasn't over. 
There was to-morrow to be considered. I had 
given orders to be ready to move off at six o'clock 
unless the Hun arrived before that. It was then 

3 A.M. 

The Army had told me that if our Corps was 
not completely wiped out their line of retreat was 
Buchoire, Crissolles and so back in the direction 
of Lassigny. They advised me to go to Crissolles. 
But one look at the map convinced me that Cris- 
solles would be German by six o'clock in the morn- 
ing. So I decided on Lagny by the secondary 
road which went straight to it from Porquericourt. 
If the brigade was not there, surely there would 
be some fighting unit who would have heard of them, 
or who might at least be able to spare us rations, or 
tell us where we could get some. Fighting on scraps 
of bread was all right but could not be prolonged 
indefinitely. 

At six o'clock we set out, as a squadron of cavalry 
with slung lances trotted like ghosts across the turf. 
We had been on the march only five minutes when a 
yell from the rear of the battery was passed quickly 
up to me as I walked in the lead. 



THE WESTERN FRONT 281 

"Halt! Action rear!" 

My heart stood still. Were the Germans stream- 
ing up in the mist? Were we caught at last like 
rats in a trap ? It couldn't be. It was some fool 
mistake. The Babe was riding just behind me. I 
called him up. "Canter back and find out who 
gave that order and bring him here. — You, lead 
driver ! Keep on walking till I give you the order 
to do anything else." 

We went on steadily. From moment to moment 
nothing seemed to happen, no rifle or machine-gun 
fire. — The Babe came back with a grin. "The 
order was 'All correct in rear,' sir." 

Can you get the feeling of relief? We were 
not prisoners or fighting to the last man with 
clubbed rifles in that cold grey dawn on empty 
stomachs. 

I obeyed the natural instinct of all mothers who 
see their child snatched from destruction, — to slap 
the infant. "Find out the man who passed it up 
wrongly and damn his soul to hell?" 

"Right, sir," said the Babe cheerily and went 
back. Good Babe, he couldn't damn even a mos- 
quito properly ! 

The road was he most ungodly track imaginable, 
blocked here and there by 60-pounders coming into 
action. But somehow the horses encompassed 
the impossible and we halted in the lane outside 
the village at about seven o'clock. The Stand-by 
remained in charge of the battery while the Babe 
and I went across gardens to get to the village 
square. There was an old man standing at a door. 



282 GUN FODDER 

He gazed at us motionless. I gave him bon jour 
and asked him for news of British troops, gunners. 
Yes, the village was full. Would we care for some 
cider ? Wouldn't we ! He produced jugfuls of 
the most perfect cider I've ever drunk and told us 
the story of his life. He was a veteran of 1870 and 
wept all down himself in the telling. We thanked 
him profusely, shook his trembling hand and went 
out of his front door into the main street. 

There were wagons with the brigade mark ! I 
could have wept with joy. 

In a couple of minutes we had found Headquar- 
ters. The man I'd dosed with champagne on the 
road corner two days before fell on my neck with 
strong oaths. It appeared that I'd been given up 
as wiped out with the whole battery, or at least 
captured. He looked upon me as back from the 
dead. 

The Colonel had a different point of view. He 
was no longer shaved and washed, and threatened 
to put me under arrest for not having rendezvoused 
at Buchoire ! Relations between us were strained, 
but everybody was in the act of getting mounted 
to reconnoitre positions so there was no time for 
explanations or recriminations. Within three quar- 
ters of an hour the battery was in action, but the 
Quartermaster had found the sergeant major, who, 
splendid fellow, had our rations. He functioned 
mightily with cooks. Tea and bacon, bread and 
butter, — what could the Carlton have done better 
than that ? 

And later, when the sun came out, there was no 



THE WESTERN FRONT 283 

firing to be done, and we slept beside the gun wheels 
under an apple tree, slept like the dead for nearly 
a whole hour. 

27. 

The Hun was indeed at Crissolles, for the brigade 
had fought there the previous evening. So much for 
Army advice. 

The day was marked by two outstanding events ; 
one, the return of the Major of the Scotch Captain's 
battery, his wound healed, full of blood thirst and 
cheeriness ; the other, that I got a shave and wash. 
We advanced during the morning to cover a village 
called Bussy. We covered it, — with gun fire and 
salvos, the signal for each salvo being a wave from 
my shaving brush. There was a hell of a battle 
in Bussy, street fighting with bayonets and bombs. 
The brigade dropped a curtain of fire on the outer 
fringe of the village and caught the enemy in full 
tide. Four batteries sending over between them 
a hundred rounds a minute of high explosive and 
shrapnel can make a nasty mess of a pin-point. 
The infantry gloated, — our infantry. 

On our right Noyon was the centra of a whirl- 
wind of Hun shells. We were not out any too soon. 
The thought added zest to our gun fire. Consider- 
ing the amount of work those guns had done in the 
last five days and nights it was amazing how they 
remained in action without even breaking down. 
The fitter worked like a nigger and nursed them 
like infants. Later the Army took him from me to 
go and drive rivets in ships ! 

We pulled out of action again as dusk was falling 



284 GUN FODDER 

and the word was passed that we had been relieved 
and were going out of the line. The brigade ren- 
dezvoused at Cuy in a field off the road while the 
traffic crept forward a yard and halted, waited an 
hour and advanced another yard, every sort of gun, 
wagon, lorry, ambulance and car, crawling back, 
blocked at every crossroads, stuck in ditches, some- 
times abandoned. 

All round the sky glared redly. Hour after hour 
we sat in that cup of ground waiting for orders, 
shivering with cold, sleeping in uneasy snatches, 
smoking tobacco that ceased to taste, nibbling ra- 
tion biscuits until the night became filled with an 
eerie strained silence. Jerky sentences stopped. 
Faint in the distance came the crunch of wheels, 
a vague undercurrent of sound. The guns had 
stopped. Now and again the chink of a horse 
mumbling his bit. The tail end of the traffic on 
the road below us was silent, waiting, the men hud- 
dled, asleep. And through it all one's ear listened 
for a new sound, the sound of marching feet, or 
trotting horses which might mean an Uhlan patrol. 
Bussy was not far. 

Suddenly one voice, far away, distinct, pierced 
the darkness like a thin but blinding ray. "Les 
Boches ! — Les Boches ! " 

A sort of shivering rustle ran over the whole bri- 
gade. Men stirred, sat up, muttered. Horses raised 
their heads with a rattle of harness. Hands crept 
to revolvers. Every breath was held and every 
head stared in the direction of the voice. 
' For a moment the silence was spellbound. 



THE WESTERN FRONT 285 

Then the voice came again, "A gauche! A gauche! 
Nom de Dieu!" and the crunch of wheels came 
again. 

The brigade relaxed. There came a laugh or 
two, a mumbled remark, a settling down, a muttered 
curse and then silence once more. 

Eventually came a stir, an order. Voices were 
raised. Sleeping figures rolled over stiffly, staggered 
up. Officers came forward. The order "Get 
mounted !" galvanised everybody. 

Wagon by wagon we pulled out of the field. My 
battery was the last. No sooner on the road, with 
our noses against the tailboard of the last vehicle 
of the battery in front, than we had to halt again 
and wait endlessly, the drivers sleeping in their 
saddles until pulled out by the N.C.O.'s, the gunners 
flinging themselves into the ditch. At last on again, 
kicking the sleepers awake, — the only method of 
rousing them. It was very cold. To halt was 
as great an agony as to march, whether mounted 
or on foot. For five days and nights one had had 
one's boots on. The condition of feet was inde- 
scribable. In places the road was blocked by aban- 
doned motor lorries. We had to extemporise bridges 
over the ditch with rocks and tins and whatever 
was in the lorries with a tailboard placed on top, 
to unhook lead horses from a four-horse gun team 
and hook them into a loaded wagon to make a six- 
horse team, to rouse the drivers sufficiently to make 
them drive properly and get the full team to work 
together, and at last, having reached a good metalled 
road, to follow the battery in front, limping and 



286 GUN FODDER 

blind, hour after hour. From time to time the 
gunners and drivers changed places. For the most 
part no word was spoken. We halted when the 
teams bumped their noses on the wagon in front, 
went on again when those in front did. At one 
halt I sat on a gun seat, the unforgivable sin for a 
gunner on the line of march, — and I was the Battery 
Commander. Sprawled over the breech of the gun 
in a stupor I knew no more for an indefinite period 
when I woke again to find us still marching. The 
sergeant major confided to me afterwards that he 
was so far my accomplice in that lack of discipline 
that he posted a gunner on either side to see that 
I didn't fall off. We had started the march about 
five o'clock in the afternoon. 

We didn't reach our destination till nine o'clock 
next morning. The destination consisted of halting 
in the road outside a village already full of troops, 
Chevrincourt. The horses were unhooked and 
taken off the road, watered, and tied to lines run 
up between trees. Breakfast was cooked, and hav- 
ing ascertained that we were not going to move 
for the rest of the day we spread our valises, and got 
into pyjamas, not caring if it snowed ink. 

28. 

We stayed there two days, doing nothing but 
water and feed the horses and sleep. I succeeded 
in getting letters home the first morning, having 
the luck to meet a junior Brass Hat who had done 
the retreat in a motor car. It was good to be able 
to put an end to their anxiety. Considering all 



THE WESTERN FRONT 287 

things we had been extraordinarily lucky. The 
number of our dead, wounded and missing was 
comparatively slight and the missing rolled up later, 
most of them. On the second night, at about 
two in the morning, Battery Commanders were 
summoned urgently to Brigade Headquarters. The 
Colonel had gone, leaving the bloodthirsty Major 
in command. It transpired that a Divisional bri- 
gade plus one battery of ours was to go back into the 
line. They would take our best guns, some of our 
best teams and our best sergeants. The exchanges 
were to be carried out at once. They were. 

We marched away that day, leaving one battery 
behind. As it happened, it didn't go into the line 
again but rejoined us a week later. 

The third phase of the retreat, marching back to 
the British area — we were far south into the French 
area at Chevrincourt which is near Compiegne, and 
all its signboards showed Paris so many kilometres 
away — gave us an impression of the backwash of 
war. The roads were full, not of troops, but of 
refugees, women, old men, girls and children, with 
what possessions they could load into a farm wagon 
piled sky high. They pulled their cattle along by 
chains or ropes tied round their horns. Some 
of them pushed perambulators full of packages and 
carried their babies. Others staggered under bun- 
dles. Grief marked their faces. The hope of return 
kept them going. The French have deeper roots 
in the soil than we. To them their "patelin" is 
the world and all the beauty thereof. It was a 
terrible sight to see those poor women trudging the 



288 GUN FODDER 

endless roads, void of a goal as long as they kept 
away from the pursuing death, half starved, sleeping 
unwashed in leaky barns, regardless of sex, begging 
milk from the inhabited villages they passed through 
to satisfy their unhappy babies, managing somehow 
to help the aged and infirm who mumbled bitter 
curses at the "sale Boche" and " soixante-dix." 
I heard one woman say "Nous savons c'qu, cest que 
la guerre! Nous avons tout fait excepts les tranchees." 
"We know what war is. We have done everything 
except the trenches." Bombarded with gas and 
long-range guns, bombed by aeroplanes, homeless, 
half starved, the graves of their dead pillaged by 
ghoul-like Huns, their sons, husbands, and lovers 
killed, indeed they knew the meaning of war. 

England has been left in merciful ignorance of 
this side of war, but woe unto her if she ever forgets 
that these women of France are her blood-sisters, 
these peasant women who later gave food to the 
emaciated Tommies who staggered back starving 
after the armistice, food of which they denied them- 
selves and their children. 

On the third day we reached Poix where only 
three months previously we had spent a merry Christ- 
mas and drunk the New Year in, the third day of 
ceaseless marching and finding billets in the middle 
of the night in villages crowded with refugees. The 
whole area was full, British and French elbowing 
each other, the unfortunate refugees being com- 
pelled to move on. 

Here we exchanged old guns for new, received 
reinforcements of men and horses, drew new equip- 



THE WESTERN FRONT 289 

ment in place of that which was destroyed and lost, 
found time to ride over to Bergicourt to pay our 
respects to the little Abbe, still unshaved, who was 
now billeting Moroccan troops, and who kissed 
us on both cheeks before all the world, and in 
three more days were on our way to their firing 
line again. 

It was here that the runaway servants were dealt 
with ; here too that my brother came rolling up in 
his car to satisfy himself that I was still this side 
of eternity or capture. And very good it was to 
see him. He gave us the number of divisions en- 
gaged against us, and we marvelled again that any 
of us were still alive. 

We went north this time for the defence of Amiens, 
having been joined by our fourth battery, and re- 
lieved a brigade in action behind the village of Gen- 
telles. The Anzacs were in the line from Villers- 
Bretonneux to Hangard where their flank touched 
the French. The spire of Amiens cathedral peeped 
up behind us and all day long-range shells whizzed 
over our heads into the stricken city. 

Some one was dissatisfied with our positions behind 
the village. The range was considered too long. 
Accordingly we were ordered to go forward and 
relieve some other batteries down the slope in front 
of Gentelles. The weather had broken. It rained 
ceaselessly. The whole area was a mud patch 
broken by shell holes. The Major who had remained 
behind at Chevrincourt and I went forward together 
to locate the forward batteries. Dead horses every- 
where, and fresh graves of men marked our path. 



290 GUN FODDER 

Never have I seen such joy on any faces as on those 
of the officers whom we were coming to relieve. 

On our return we reported unfavourably, urging 
strongly that we should remain where we were. 
The order was inexorable. That night we went in. 

We stayed there three days, at the end of which 
time we were withdrawn behind the village again. 
Our dead were three officers — one of whom was the 
Babe — half the gunners, and several drivers. Our 
wounded were one officer and half the remaining 
gunners. Of the guns themselves about six in the 
brigade were knocked out by direct hits. 

Who was that dissatisfied "some one" who, hav- 
ing looked at a map from the safety of a back area, 
would not listen to the report of two Majors, one a 
regular, who had visited the ground and spoke from 
their bitterly-earned experience? Do the ghosts 
of those officers and men, unnecessarily dead, dis- 
turb his rest o' nights, or is he proudly wearing 
another ribbon for distinguished service? Even 
from the map he ought to have known better. It 
was the only place where a fool would have put 
guns. The German artillery judged him well. 

Poor Babe, to be thrown away at the beginning 
of his manhood at the dictate of some ignorant and 
cowardly Brass Hat ! 

"Young, unmarried men, your King and country 
need you!" 

29. 

So we crawled out of that valley of death. With 
what remained of us in men and guns we formed 



THE WESTERN FRONT 291 

three batteries, two of which went back to their 
original positions behind the village and in disproof 
of their uselessness fired four thousand rounds a 
day per battery, fifty-six wagon-loads of ammuni- 
tion. The third battery tucked itself into a corner 
of the village and remained there till its last gun 
had been knocked out. One S.O.S. lasted thirty- 
six hours. One lived with a telephone and a map. 
Sleep was unknown. Food was just food, eaten 
when the servants chose to bring it. The brain 
reeled under the stupendousness of the strain and 
the firing. For cover we lived in a hole in the 
ground, some four feet deep with a tarpaulin to keep 
the rain out. It was just big enough to hold us all. 
The wings of the angel of death brushed our faces 
continuously. Letters from home were read with- 
out being understood. One watched men burned 
to death in the battery in front, as the result of a 
direct hit, without any emotion. If there be a hell 
such as the Church talks about, then indeed we had 
reached it. 

We got a new Colonel here, and the bloodthirsty 
Major returned to his battery, the Scotch Captain 
having been one of the wounded. My own Captain 
rolled up again too, having been doing all sorts of 
weird fighting up and down the line. It was only 
now that we learned the full extent of the retreat 
and received an order of the day from the Com- 
mander in Chief to the effect that England had its 
back up against the wall. In other words the Hun 
was only to pass over our dead bodies. He at- 
tempted it at every hour of the day and night. The 



292 GUN FODDER 

Anzacs lost and retook Villers-Bretonneux. The 
enemy got to Cachy, five hundred yards in front of 
the guns, and was driven back again. The French 
Colonials filled Hangard Wood with their own and 
German dead, the wounded leaving a trail of blood 
day and night past our hole in the ground. The 
Anzacs revelled in it. They had never killed so 
many men in their lives. Their General, a great tall 
man of mighty few words, was round the outpost 
line every day. He was much loved. Every officer 
and man would gladly have stopped a shell for him. 

At last we were pulled out of the line, at half an 
hour's notice. Just before hooking in — the teams 
were on the position — there was a small S.O.S. 
lasting five minutes. My battery fired four hundred 
rounds in that time, — pretty good going for men 
who had come through such an inferno, practically 
without sleep for fifteen days. 

We sat under a haystack in the rain for forty- 
eight hours and the Colonel gave us lectures on 
calibration. Most interesting ! 

I confess to having been done in completely. The 
Babe's death had been a frightful shock. His 
shoulder was touching mine as he got it and I had 
carried him spouting blood to the shelter of a bank. 
I wanted to get away and hide. I was afraid, not 
of death, but of going on in that living hell. I was 
unable to concentrate sufficiently to dictate the 
battery orders. I was unable to face the nine 
o'clock parade and left it to the Orderly Officer. 
The day's routine made me so jumpy that I couldn't 
go near the lines or the horses. The sight of a gun 



THE WESTERN FRONT 293 

filled me with physical sickness. The effort of 
giving a definite order left me trembling all over. 

The greatest comfort I knew was to lie on my 
valise in the wet straw with closed eyes and listen 
to "Caprice Viennois" on the gramophone. It 
lifted one's soul with gentle hands and bore it away 
into infinite space where all was quiet and full of 
eternal rest and beauty. It summed up the youth 
of the world, the springtime of love in all its fresh 
cleanness, like the sun after an April shower trans- 
forming the universe into magic colours. 

I think the subalterns guessed something of my 
trouble for they went out of their way to help me 
in little things. 

We marched north and went into the line again 
behind Albert, a murdered city whose skeleton 
melted before one's eyes under the ceaseless rain 
of shells from our heavy artillery. 

During and since the retreat the cry on all sides 
was "Where the devil are the Americans ?" — those 
mysterious Americans who were reported to be land- 
ing at the rate of seven a minute. What became of 
them after landing? They seemed to disappear. 
Some had seen them buying up Marseilles, and then 
painting Paris all colours of the rainbow, but no 
one had yet heard of them doing any fighting. The 
attitude was not very bright, until Pershing's offer 
to Foch. Then everybody said "Ah! Now we 
shall see something." Our own recruits seemed to 
be the dregs of England, untrained, weedy speci- 
mens who had never seen a gun and were incapable 
of learning. Yet we held the Hun all right. One 



294 GUN FODDER 

looked for the huskies from U.S.A., however, with 
some anxiety. 

At Albert we found them, specimens of them, 
wedged in the line with our infantry, learning the 
game. Their one desire was to go out into No Man's 
Land and get to close quarters. They brought 
Brother Boche or bits of him every time. One 
overheard talk on one's way along the trenches to 
the O.P. "Danger?" queried one sarcastically, 
"Say, I ain't bin shot at yet." And another time 
when two officers and I had been shelled out of the 
O.P. by a pip-squeak battery to our extreme dis- 
comfort and danger, we came upon a great beefy 
American standing on the fire step watching the 
shells burst on the place we had just succeeded in 
leaving. "If that guy don't quit foolin' around 
with that gun," he said thoughtfully, "some one'll 
likely get hurt in a minute." 

Which was all to the good. They shaped well. 
The trouble apparently was that they had no guns 
and no rifles. 

Our own positions were another instance of the 
criminal folly of ignorance, — great obvious white 
gashes in a green field, badly camouflaged, photo- 
graphed and registered by the Hun, so placed that 
the lowest range to clear the crest was 3500 and the 
S.O.S. was 3550. It meant that if the Germans 
advanced only fifty yards we could not bring fire 
to bear on them. 

The dawn of our getting in was enlivened by an 
hour's bombardment with gas and four-twos. Every 
succeeding dawn was the same. 



THE WESTERN FRONT 295 

Fortunately it proved to be a peace sector, com- 
paratively speaking, and I moved out of that un- 
savoury spot with no more delay than was required 
in getting the Colonel's consent. It only took the 
death of one man to prove my point. He was a 
mere gunner, not even on proficiency pay, so pre- 
sumably it was cheap knowledge. We buried him 
at midnight in pouring rain, the padre reading the 
service by the light of my electric torch. But the 
Colonel wasn't there. 

From the new position so reluctantly agreed 
to we fired many hundreds of rounds, as did 
our successors, and not a single man became a 
casualty. 

What is the psychology of this system of insisting 
on going into childishly unsuitable positions ? Do 
they think the Battery Commander a coward who 
balks at a strafed emplacement? Isn't the idea of 
field gunners to put their guns in such a place as 
will permit them to remain in action effectively for 
the longest possible time in a show? Why, there- 
fore, occupy a position already accurately registered 
by the enemy, which he can silence at any given 
moment? Do they think that a Major of two 
years' experience in command of a battery in the 
line has not learned at least the rudiments of choos- 
ing positions for his guns? Do they think it is an 
attempt to resent authority, or to assert their own 
importance? Do they think that the difference 
of one pip and a foot of braid is the boundary 
between omniscience and crass stupidity? 

In civil life if the senior partner insists on doing 



296 GUN FODDER 

the junior's job and bungles it, the junior can re- 
sign, — and say things. 

While we were outside Albert we got our first 
leave allotment and the ranks were permitted to 
return to their wives and families for fourteen days, 
provided always that they had been duly vaccinated, 
inoculated, and declared free from vermin and 
venereal disease by the medical officer. 

A delightful game, the inoculation business. 
Army orders are careful not to make it compulsory, 
but if any man refuses to be done his commanding 
officer is expected to argue with him politely, and, 
if that fails, to hound him to the needle. If he shies 
at the needle's point then his leave is stopped, — 
although he has sweated blood for King and country 
for eighteen months or so, on a weekly pay with 
which a munitioneer daily tips the waiter at the 
Carlton. If he has been unlucky enough to get 
venereal disease then his leave is stopped for a 
year. 

In the next war every Tommy will be a munition 
maker. 

30. 

The desire to get out of it, to hide, refused to 
leave me. 

I wrote to my brother and asked him if he could 
help me to become an R.T.O. or an M.L.O. ; fail- 
ing that, a cushy liaison job miles away from sham- 
bles and responsibility and spit and polish. He 
knew of the very thing, and I was duly nominated 
for liaison. The weeks went by and the nomina- 



THE WESTERN FRONT 297 

tion papers became a mass of illegible recommenda- 
tions and signatures up to the highest Generals of 
the English Army and a Marechal of France. But 
the ultimate reply was that I was a Battery Com- 
mander and therefore far too important to be al- 
lowed to go. Considering that I was half dead and 
not even allowed an opinion in the choosing of a 
position for my own battery, Gilbert and Sullivan 
could have conceived no more priceless paradox. 

Somewhere about the end of May we were relieved 
and went to a rest camp outside Abbeville which 
was being bombed every night. A special week's 
leave to England was granted to "war- weary offi- 
cers." I sent a subaltern and, prepared to pawn 
my own soul to see England again, asked if I might 
go too. 

The reply is worthy of quotation. "You don't 
seem to understand that this is a rest camp, the 
time when you are supposed to train your battery. 
You'll get your leave in the line." 

The camp was on turf at the edge of a deep lake. 
All day the horses roamed free grazing, and the men 
splashed about in the water whenever they felt 
inclined. The sun shone and footballs appeared 
from nowhere and there were shops in the village 
where they could spend money and Abbeville was 
only about a mile and a half away. In the morning 
we did a little gun drill and cleaned vehicles and 
harness. Concerts took place in the evenings. 
Leslie Henson came with a theatrical company and 
gave an excellent show. The battery enjoyed its 
time of training. 



298 GUN FODDER 

Most of those officers who weren't sufficiently war- 
weary for the week in England, went for a couple 
of days to Treport or Paris-Plage. For myself I 
got forty-eight hours in Etaples with my best pal 
who was giving shows to troops about to go up the 
line, feeding train-loads of refugees and helping to 
bandage wounded ; and somehow or other keeping 
out of the way of the bombs which wrecked the 
hospital and drove the reinforcement camps to sleep 
in the woods on the other side of the river. We 
drove out to Paris-Plage and lunched and dined 
and watched the golden sea sparkling and walked 
back in a moonlight filled with the droning of 
Gothas, the crashing of bombs and the impotent 
rage of an Archie barrage. 

Not only were there no horses to look after nor 
men to handle but there was a kindred spirit to talk 
with when one felt like it, or with whom to remain 
silent when one didn't. Blessed be pals, for they 
are few and far between, and their value is above 
rubies. 

Our rest camp came to an end with an inspection 
from Field Marshal Sir Douglas Haig and once more 
we took the trail. The battery's adventures from 
then until the first day of the attack which was 
to end the war can be briefly summed up, as we saw 
hardly any fighting. We went back to Albert and 
checked calibrations, then entrained and went off 
to Flanders where we remained in reserve near 
St. Omer for a fortnight or so. Then we entrained 
once more and returned to Albert, but this time 
south of it, behind Morlancourt. 



THE WESTERN FRONT 299 

There was an unusual excitement in the air and 
a touch of optimism. Foch was said to have some- 
thing up his sleeve. The Hun was reported to be 
evacuating Albert. The Americans had been blooded 
and had come up to expectations. There was a 
different atmosphere about the whole thing. On 
our own sector the Hun was offensive. The night 
we came in he made a raid, took two thousand 
yards of front line on our right, and plastered us 
with gas and four-twos for several hours. No one 
was hurt or gassed except myself. I got a dose of 
gas. The doctor advised me to go down to the 
wagon line for a couple of days but the barrage 
was already in for our attack and the Captain was 
in England on the Overseas Course. The show 
started about 4 p.m. right along the front. 

It was like the 21st of March with the positions 
reversed. South of us the whole line broke through 
and moved forward. At Morlancourt the Hun 
fought to the death. It was a sort of pivot, and for 
a couple of days we pounded him. By that time the 
line had ceased to bulge and was practically north 
and south. Then our infantry took Morlancourt 
and pushed the Hun back on to the Fricourt ridge 
and in wild excitement we got the order to advance. 
It was about seven o'clock at night. All Battery 
Commanders and the Colonel dashed up in a car 
to the old front line to reconnoitre positions. The 
car was missed by about twelve yards with high 
explosive and we advanced in the dark, falling over 
barbed wire, tumbling into shell holes, jumping 
trenches and treading on corpses through a most 



300 GUN FODDER 

unpleasant barrage. The Hun had a distinct sting 
in his tail. 

We came into position about three hundred yards 
northwest of Morlancourt. The village and all 
the country round stank of festering corpses, mostly 
German, though now and again one came upon a 
British pair of boots and puttees with legs in them, — 
or a whole soldier with a pack on his back who looked 
as if he were sleeping until one saw that half his face 
was blown away. It made one sick, sick with horror, 
whether it was our own Tommies or a long trench 
chaotic with rifles, equipment, machine guns and 
yellow, staring and swollen Germans. 

The excitement of advancing died away. The 
"glory of victory" was just one long butchery, 
one awful smell, an orgy of appalling destruction 
unequalled by the barbarians of pre-civilisation. 

Here was all the brain, energy and science of 
nineteen hundred years of "progress", concentrated 
on lust and slaughter, and we called it glorious 
bravery and rang church bells ! Soldier poets sang 
their swan songs in praise of dying for their country, 
their country which gave them a period of hell, and 
agonising death, then wept crocodile tears over the 
Roll of Honour, and finally returned with an easy 
conscience to its money-grubbing. The gladiators 
did it better. At least they were permitted a final 
sarcasm, "Morituri, te salutant!" 

Even gentle women at home who are properly 
frightened of mice and spank small boys caught 
; ll-treating an animal, even they read the flaming 
headlines of the papers with a light in their eyes and 



THE WESTERN FRONT 301 

said, "How glorious! We are winning!" Would 
they have said the same if they could have been 
set down on that reeking battlefield where riddled 
tanks splashed with blood heaved drunkenly, am- 
bulances continuously drove away with the smashed 
wrecks of what once were men, leaving a trail of 
screams in the dust of the road, and always the guns 
crashed out their psean of hate by day and night 
ceaselessly, remorselessly, with a terrible trained 
hunger to kill and maim and wipe out ? 

There was no stopping. I was an insignificant 
cog in that vast machine but no man could stop 
the wheels in their mighty revolutions. Fate stepped 
in, however. 

We advanced again to Mametz and there merci- 
fully I got another dose of gas. The effects of the 
first one, seven days previously, had not worked off. 
This was the last straw. Three days later it toppled 
me over. The doctors labelled me and sent me 
home. 



PART IV 
THE ARMISTICE 



IV. THE ARMISTICE 
1. 

The battery, commanded by I know not whom, 
went on to the bitter end in that sweeping advance 
which broke the Hindenburg line and brought the 
enemy to his knees. Their luck held good, for 
occasional letters from the subalterns told me that 
no one else had been killed. The last I heard of 
them they were at Treport, enjoying life with the 
hope of demobilisation dangling in front of their 
eyes. May it not dangle too long. 

For me the war was over. I have never fired a 
gun again, nor, please God, will I ever do so. 

In saying the war was over I was wrong. I should 
have said the fighting. There were other and equally 
terrible sides of this world-tragedy which I was 
destined to see and feel. 

Let me sketch briefly the facts which led to my re- 
turn to duty. 

The Medical Authorities sent me to a place called 
The Funkhole of England, a seaside town where 
never a bomb from airships or raiding Gothas dis- 
turbed the sunny calm, a community of convalescent 
hospitals with a list of rules as long as your arm, 
hotels full of moneyed Hebrews who only journeyed 
to London by day to make more money and retired 



306 GUN FODDER 

by night to the security of their wives in the Funk- 
hole, shopkeepers who rejoiced in the war because it 
enabled them to put up their prices two hundred per 
cent, and indecent flappers always ready to be 
picked up by any subaltern. 

The War Office authorities hastened to notify 
me that I was now reduced to subaltern, but some- 
how I was "off" flappers. Another department 
begged me to get well quickly, because, being no 
longer fit to command a battery, I was wanted for 
that long-forgotten liaison job. 

The explanation of degrading from Major to 
subaltern is not forthcoming. Perhaps the Govern- 
ment were thinking of the rate payers. The dif- 
ference in pay is about two shillings and sixpence 
a day, and there were many thousands of us thus 
reduced. — But it does not make for an exuberant 
patriotism. My reply was that if I didn't go out 
as a Major I should not hurry to get well. This 
drew a telegram which stated that I was re-ap- 
pointed acting-Major while employed as liaison 
officer, but what they gave with one hand they took 
back with the other, for the telegram ordered me 
to France again three weeks before the end of my 
sick leave. 

It was a curious return. But for the fact that I 
was still in uniform I might have been a mere tourist, 
a spectator. The job was more "cushy" even than 
that of R.T.O. or M.L.O. Was I glad? Enor- 
mously. Was I sorry ? Yes, for out there in the 
thick of it were those men of mine, in a sense my 
children, who had looked to me for the food they 



THE ARMISTICE 307 

ate, the clothes they wore, the pay they drew, the 
punishments they received, whose lives had been 
in my keeping so long, who for two years had con- 
stituted all my life, with whom I had shared good 
days and bad, short rations and full, hardships 
innumerable, suffering indescribable. It was im- 
possible to live softly and be driven in a big Vauxhall 
car, while they were still out there, without a twinge 
of conscience, even though one was not fit to go back 
to them. I slept in a bed with sheets and now and 
again had a hot bath, receiving letters from home in 
four days instead of eight, and generally enjoying 
all the creature comforts which console the back- 
area officer for the lack of excitement only found in 
the firing line. It was a period of doing little, 
observing much and thinking a great deal among 
those lucky ones of the earth whose lines had 
been cast in peaceful waters far behind even the 
backwash of that cataclysmic tidal wave in which 
so many less fortunate millions had been sucked 
under. 

My first job was to accompany a party of French 
war correspondents to the occupied territory which 
the enemy had recently been forced to evacuate, 
— Dunkerque, Ostend, Bruges, Courtrai, Denain, 
Lille. There one marvelled at the courage of those 
citizens who for four years had had to bow the neck 
to the invader. From their own mouths we heard 
stories of the systematic, thought-out cruelty of the 
Germans who hurt not only the bodies of their vic- 
tims, but their self-respect, their decency, their 
honour, their souls. How they survived that in- 



308 GUN FODDER 

terminable hopeless four years of exaggerated bru- 
tality and pillage, cut off from all communication 
with the outside world ; fed with stories of ghastly 
defeats inflicted upon their countrymen and allies, 
of distrust and revolt between England and France ; 
fined and imprisoned for uncommitted offences 
against military law, not infrequently shot in cold 
blood without trial; their women submitted to 
the last indignities of the "Inspection sanitaire", 
irrespective of age or class, wrenched from their 
homes and deported into the unknown interior, sent 
to work for the hated enemy behind the firing line, 
unprotected from the assault of any German soldier 
or officer, — for those women there were worse 
things than the firing trenches. 

We saw the results of the German Official Depart- 
ment of Demobilisation which had its headquarters 
in Alsace-Lorraine at Metz under a General, by 
whose direct orders all the factories in the occupied 
regions were dismantled and sent back piecemeal 
to Germany, the shells of the plant then being 
dynamited under pretence of military necessity. 
We saw a country stripped of its resources, gutted, 
sacked, rendered sterile. 

What is the Kultur, the philosophy which not 
only renders such conduct thinkable but puts it 
into the most thorough execution? Are we mad 
to think that such people can be admitted into a 
League of Nations until after hundreds of years of 
repentance and expiation in sackcloth and ashes? 
They should be made the slaves of Europe, the hewers 
of wood and drawers of water, the road-sweepers 



THE ARMISTICE 309 

and offal-burners, deprived of a voice in their own 
government, without standing in the eyes of all 
peoples. 

2. 

French General Headquarters, to which I was 
then sent as liaison officer, was established in a little 
old-world town, not far from Paris, whose walls 
had been battered by the English centuries ago. 
Curious to think that after hundreds of years of 
racial antagonism we should at last have our eyes 
opened to the fact that our one-time enemies have 
the same qualities of courage and endurance, a far 
truer patriotism and a code of honour which nothing 
can break. No longer do we think of them as 
flippant and decadent. We know them for a nation 
of big-hearted men, loyal to the death, of lion-like 
courage, with the capacity for hanging on which in 
our pride we ascribed only to the British bulldog. 
We have seen Verdun. We have stood side by side 
with them in mud and blood, in fat days and lean, 
and know it to be true. 

In this little town where the bells chimed the 
swift hours and market day drew a concourse of 
peasant women, we sat breathless at the 'phone, 
hourly marking the map that liberated each time a 
little more of France. Days of wild hope that the end 
was at hand, the end which such a short time back 
had seemed so infinitely remote, days when the future 
began to be a possibility, that future which for four 
years one had not dared to dream about. Will the 
rose colours ever come back? Or will the memory 
of those million dead go down with one to the grave ? 



310 GUN FODDER 

The Armistice was signed. The guns had stopped. 
For a breathless moment the world stood still. The 
price was paid. The youth of England and France 
lay upturned to the sky. Three thousand miles 
across the ocean American mothers wept their un- 
buried sons. Did Germany shed tears of sorrow, 
or rage ? 

The world travail was over, and even at that 
sacred moment when humanity should have been 
purged of all pettiness and meanness, should have 
bowed down in humility and thankfulness, forces 
were astir to try and raise up jealousy, hatred and 
enmity between England, France and America. 

Have we learnt nothing? Are these million dead 
in vain? Are we to let the pendulum swing back 
to the old rut of dishonest hypocritical self-seeking, 
disguised under the title of that misunderstood 
word "patriotism"? Have we not yet looked into 
the eyes of Truth and seen ourselves as we are? 
Is all this talk of world peace and league of nations 
mere newspaper cant to disguise the fear of being 
out-grabbed at the peace conference? Shall we 
return to lying, hatred and all malice and re-crucify 
Christ? What is the world travail for? To pro- 
duce stillborn through our own negligence the hope 
of Peace? The leopard cannot change his spots, 
you say. My answer is that the leopard does not 
want to. What does the present hold out to us who 
have been through the Valley of the Shadow? 
What does it look like to us who gaze down upon 
it from the pinnacle of four years upon the edge of 
eternity ? This is what it looks like : this, what it 



THE ARMISTICE 311 

holds out : a corpse of what was once the most 
beautiful woman, fast entering into decomposition. 
The elements of that decomposition are what it 
holds out to us, a Body-politic surging with clamour- 
ing voices, all striving after self, filled with the lust 
of power at any price, even that of honesty and truth, 
who would sell their country for a mess of pottage ; 
a Church which has denied God, pandering to 
snobbery, reeking of hypocrisy and cant, spoon- 
feeding its people with a comfortable, easy-going 
effete creed whose resemblance to real religion is a 
mockery, revelling in sin on week-days and salving 
its conscience by a half crown in the bag on Sundays, 
dealing in superstition to any who will buy; a 
Justice, well-represented blind whose scales are 
rusty, and whose weights are false; a Press which 
crawls down the foul gutters of life like a mangy 
dog raking over muck heaps for stray bones, batten- 
ing upon the backstairs of divorce courts, gloating 
over sexual intrigue, illustrating it pornographically, 
suppressing truth as though it were a plague, already 
quarreling over unmourned dead as to who won this 
battle and that, filled with jealousy and hatred ; a 
Faculty of Medicine more charlatan than any negro 
witch-finder, hushing up its abortions, leaving a 
trail of death and broken hearts on its way to Harley 
Street, that marketplace of lies ; a Theatre whose 
stage doors are the tombs of virtue, virginity the 
price of entrance to the race for success ; a Eugenics 
based on mock-modesty, a shocked screening of 
facts, leaving the young to grope their way to knowl- 
edge through the satisfying of a curiosity which 



312 GUN FODDER 

sends our sons to Piccadilly and our daughters to 
promiscuous country houses; an Education like 
a foundry which pours off the liquid gold of our 
youth through one mould into square bars all the same 
shape, lacking in ideals, practising a sneaking im- 
morality counteracted in part by athleticism, al- 
ready imbued with the spirit of laisser faire, fired 
with ambition, the ambition to sow wild oats. — On 
the night of the Armistice, Allied officers went out 
from prison camps and debauched with German 
prostitutes. They defiled the Roll of Honour. 

We have gone through the greatest war of all time 
and looked back upon the country that bred us. 
That is something of what we saw. 

Your old men shall see visions and your young men 
shall dream dreams. 

The vision of the old men has been realised. In 
the orgy of effort for world domination they have 
dug up a world unrest fertilised by the sightless 
faces of youth upturned to the sky. Their working 
hypothesis was false. The result is failure. They 
have destroyed themselves also in the conflagration 
which they started. It has burnt up the ancient 
fetishes, consumed their shibboleths. Their day is 
done. They stand among the still-smoking ruins, 
naked and very ugly. 

The era of the young men has begun. Bent under 
the Atlas-like burden loaded upon their shoulders 
they have stood daily for five years upon the edge 
of eternity. They have stared across into the eyes 
of Truth, some unrecognising, others with disdain, 
but many there are in whose returning faces is the 



THE ARMISTICE 313 

dawn of wisdom. They are coming back, the burden 
exchanged. On them rests the fate of the unborn. 
Already their feet are set upon the new way. But 
are they strong enough unaided to keep the pendulum 
from swinging back ? No. It is too heavy. Every 
one of us must let ourselves hear the new note in their 
voices, calling us to the recognition of the ideal. 
For five years all the science, philosophy and energy 
of mankind has been concentrated on the art of deal- 
ing death. The young men ask that mankind should 
now concentrate on the art of giving life. We have 
proved the power within us because the routine of 
the world's great sin has established this surprising 
paradox, that we daily gave evidence of heroism, 
tolerance, kindliness, brotherhood. 

Shall we, like Peter who denied Christ, refuse to 
recognise the greatness within ourselves ? We found 
truth while we practised war. Let us carry it to the 
practice of peace. 



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